Fung Lim at North Brooklyn Boat Club reported to me at my post at Newtown Creek Alliance that the ever-troubled creek had turned a dramatic shade of dark red. We went looking for answers:
Photo by Fung Lim
Randall Austin from NYSDEC – “Conditions would be right for an algal bloom: rainfall (runoff) followed by a “heat wave” – would kick up the algae count…these normally occur at the end of the Summer when the ambient water temp has risen gradually. It can happen under the recent weather circumstances, though.”
John Lipscomb from Riverkeeper – “Yes we see it often in summer during sunny dry spells. I was on Newtown Creek last Friday and we saw it then.”
In conclusion, phytoplankton eat sewage and love sunshine.
Last night I had a dream that we were testing a new plankton sampling tool, a large syringe more or less the size of a rocket launcher. It had a bristly filter inside that slid out looking like a core sample of sea life.
In the dream I visited the lab of Holly Porter-Morgan and Sarah Durand, two professors at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York, near the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek. I have visited their lab in real life, but in the dream it was a future lab, full of new technology and gadgets that they were showing me.
In the second scene of the dream, I was walking over a marsh, and it was slow going in the soft mud. I looked at the plankton launcher and extruded its contents. Trapped in the bristles were many twinkling, turning creatures, some large and globby, others just specks of life.
Illustration by Apak, www.apakstudio.com
It’s the first dream I can remember having in years.
