Downtown Fishes Returned to Their Hudson River Home

A blackfish, one of 52 fish species captured and kept in one of The River Project's tanks, waits its turn to be set free back in the Hudson River. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

It was time to say goodbye last Thursday to more than 100 fish and many other aquatic creatures that had been serving as “mini teachers” at The River Project on Pier 40.

Caught in traps off the Lilac at Tribeca’s Pier 26 beginning in early spring, the animals have been the center of attraction and study for visitors and biologists at the marine science field station. With winter coming, and no heat to prevent tank pumps from freezing, the fish each year are ceremonially released back into the water.

“Bye, bye!” shouted a waving crowd of onlookers as, one by one, the fish were lowered by bucket into the water.

“A lot of the fish will bury themselves in the sediment, hang out in a torpor state where they chill out and kind of hibernate like bears,” Chris Anderson, the River Project’s director of education, explained to the gathering before the fish release began. ”Their heart rate’s going to go down and they’re not going to eat that much over the next few months when the water gets really cold.” Some, he added, will swim past the Statue of Liberty into deeper water where it’s warm, and others will migrate.

Cathy Drew, who founded The River Project on Pier 26 in 1986 and serves as executive director, said that 52 of the 210 fish species in New York Harbor were captured for study this year.

“When you get to know them you see that they like things, and they don’t like things, there are even people who they like and they don’t,” she said. “We’re a lot like them and I think that’s the main thing to learn.”

Indeed, their release is something humans can appreciate.

“It was not easy for them being with us,” Drew added. “They’re free now.”