What Animals Live In The Hudson River

Odd and notable creatures of the Hudson River

Alee of the Rails, River, Hudson II tour this coming weekend, nosotros have a series of posts focusing on the Hudson River this week.

The Hudson River is many things:a thread through history, a transportation corridor, a scenic inspiration. But offset and foremost it'southward a habitat for all sort of creatures.

Here are a few odd and notable inhabitants of the Hudson River...

River Calendar week is sponsored by: Albany Canton Convention and Visitors Bureau, Downtown Albany BID, Dutch Apple Cruises, Harmony Mills, Hudson River Greenway, Nine Pin Cider, Sugariness Sue'south, and Downtown Troy BID.

The icon: Atlantic sturgeon

illustration: Duane Raver/U.South. Fish and Wild animals Service via Wikipedia

The Atlantic sturgeon is an iconic species for the Hudson River -- so much so that information technology serves every bit the logo on the signs that note the river'due south estuary. And sturgeon have long held a place in the history of Albany. Information technology was a favorite food in this area going all the back to the Dutch times and came to exist known as "Albany beef."

But the sturgeon's history runs waaaay longer than that.

"They're some of the nigh aboriginal fish y'all're going to detect in New York," says Jeremy Wright, the New York State Museum's curator of ichthyology, explaining the only types of fish in New York that are older are jawless fish such equally lampreys. As a species sturgeon date to the Mesozoic Era, more than than 60 million years ago. Yep, they were contemporaries with dinosaurs.

They look ancient, as well. Atlantic sturgeon in the Hudson River sometimes grow to vi-viii feet long and more than 200 pounds. (They can get even bigger in other settings.) They take a long, pointed snout. And they're covered in bony plates. "Anyone who's seen one is never going to forget what a sturgeon looks like," says Wright. "They're really distinctive fish."

Unfortunately, recent history hasn't been kind to sturgeon. Overfishing has greatly diminished populations of sturgeon species both in the Hudson River and around the globe (that 1881 Albany beef NYT article linked in a higher place notes that even then demand was outstripping supply). And they're now considered endangered. In 1998 a moratorium on fishing them was instituted forth the East Coast, and it could last until the late 2030s.

Part of the problem for sturgeon is that they accept a long to time to develop and grow. Sturgeon can live as long as sixty years, and in the Hudson River they don't reach maturity until they're xi-21 years sometime.

"Fisheries biologists talk about this like clear cutting, which I remember is an apt illustration," says David Strayer, a freshwater ecologist at the Cary Found of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook. "Y'all wouldn't think yous could go into a wood lot and cut all the trees every five minutes and expect there to be a woods in that location whatsoever longer. Everybody understands it takes and so many years for a baby tree to abound upwards. Information technology'southward the same way with the sturgeons. When we started angling them real hard information technology was like someone went into the woods and cut all the trees."

And now, the hope is, the moratorium will allow the sturgeon population to slowly abound back.

By the way: At that place are two species of sturgeon in the Hudson River: the Atlantic sturgeon, which swims out to bounding main to feed and return upwards river to spawn; and the shortnose sturgeon, which is smaller (about 3.v feet) and spend their whole lives in the river.

The ethereal: glass eels

A scattering of glass eels. / photo: Chris Bowser/NYSDEC/Cornell WRI

Drinking glass eels are interesting and odd for a agglomeration reasons, simply two things stick out virtually them immediately:

1. Their lifecycle includes both the Sargasso Sea (out by Bermuda) and the Hudson River.

two. The juveniles are clear. They expect similar they're fabricated of glass, thus the name drinking glass eel. "They're beautiful, delicate, fiddling creatures," says the Cary Institute'southward David Strayer.

The glass eels are the juvenile versions of the American eel. Adults eels head out to the Sargasso sea to breed, and and so their larvae are swept by currents back toward the east declension of the Usa. The juvenile eels and then make their way up rivers, including the Hudson, and into tributaries where they grow.

That'due south a chip odd -- usually fish, like sturgeon or salmon, breed up river and then caput out to body of water to feed.

Another thing you might non expect: Eels can climb upwardly waterfalls.

"They're pretty good at getting over obstacles," says Strayer. "So they can crawl upwards waterfalls, people fifty-fifty talk nearly them going effectually waterfalls on wet nights up on the state. So sometimes you get eels upstream of waterfalls and people wonder how they practise that. It's because the glass eels tin can kind of climb over these things." (Sometimes people install structures chosen "eel ladders" to assist the eels around dams or other obstructions.)

If you're curious to learn more nigh the eels, the Hudson River Eel Research Project has a bunch of information posted online, and a Facebook page with updates virtually eel inquiry and events (y'all just missed this year'southward "eelabration"), and at that place are fifty-fifty opportunities to volunteer to help with research.

The mutants: Atlantic tomcod

photograph: Joanie Côté via Wikipedia

The Atlantic tomcod is like something from a fish comic book. Because hiding within its Deoxyribonucleic acid was a special ability that was merely noticed because of its see with a toxic substance.

In 2011 researchers reported that some Atlantic tomcod in the Hudson River carried a version of gene that allowed to them to resist the effects of PCB pollution -- which is pretty good ability to accept considering, as you know, the river'southward long running problem with pollution from the toxic substances.

"The thought is that when the contamination showtime occurred, there was basically a sweep through the population that wiped out all these individuals that didn't have this mutation," says the State Museum'southward Jeremy Wright, explaining that PCBs interfere with the development of the heart and cardiovascular system in the fish. "And that just left the individuals that could handle the increased concentration of PCBs. And then they were the only ones left to reproduce, so the mutation became fixed in the population."

Wright says the researchers found that 10 percentage of the tomcod in rivers unaffected by PCB contagion carried the genetic variation -- simply virtually all of the fish in the Hudson and Hackensack (also polluted by PCBs) rivers had it.

Says Wright: "It provides evidence that's there really strong option for this mutation in the Hudson and Hackensack rivers that'southward occurred relatively recently that'due south resulted in a major evolutionary shift in this particular gene."

The last holdouts: freshwater mussels

A native pearly mussel crusted with invasive zebra mussels. / photo courtesy of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

At one time native freshwater mussels reigned in the Hudson River. The Cary Institute's Dave Strayer says there were once 12 native species of freshwater mussels in the Hudson near Albany, and some 1.1 billion of them in the whole river. Some species of the mussels lived to be l-100 years onetime.

"If y'all await effectually Albany on the shores or beaches y'all find nevertheless shells, clam shells, and that'south what they are, mussels," he says.

Only now they're on the verge of disappearing. The culprit: the invasive zebra mussel, which attach themselves to the mussels (and everything else) and outcompete them for the phytoplankton they consume.

"The zebra mussels are killing them off," says Strayer. "My guess is that they will disappear most entirely in the adjacent few years because of the zebra mussels."

The odd visitors

Youtube user Robin Read posted this clip last August, noting it was just north of Coxsackie.

1 of the defining features virtually the Hudson River is that it's open to the sea all the way from New York Metropolis up to Troy. And every bit a effect, the river ends upwards getting some visitors from the ocean you might not expect.

"Occasionally people pick upwardly these oddball things in the river -- seals, and whales, and crabs, and things similar that that you lot'd think should be in the body of water," says Strayer. "And at that place's actually quite a few of these things that make upwards into the river."

There are historic accounts of whales having fabricated their style every bit far as Cohoes more than three centuries ago.

And in the last few years in that location have been seal sightings in the Hudson River at Coxsackie, every bit the animals apparently follow food upwardly the river. Here's 1 from this past May reported by CBS6.

Strayer says he heard in one of the sightings, the seal seemed just every bit curious every bit the people: "The fauna pulled his chin right up onto someone's kayak to look at him."

____

Also from River Week:
+ Hopping islands in the Hudson River

Source: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2015/07/07/odd-and-notable-creatures-of-the-hudson-river

Posted by: hunsuckermilitaidele1997.blogspot.com

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