Now this, my friends, is just plain cool. If you happen to like history or random, seemingly pointless bits of knowledge, you have to spend some time reading Secrets of the Deep (What lies beneath the surface of New York Harbor?). It’s a two page article at NYMag.com
I won’t blow all the secrets for you. I mean, I know you are lazy – who in an “on demand” society is not – but I’ll give you a few that you may find interesting.
2.Teredos and Gribbles
Two kinds of hungry pests gnaw away at the pilings that hold up structures like the FDR Drive, the U.N. school on East 25th Street, and the Con Ed plant at 14th. Teredos, which start life looking like tiny clams, grow up to be worms “as big around as your thumb, and nearly four feet long, with little triangular teeth,” says commercial diver Lenny Speregen. Like underwater termites, they devour wood. And Limnoria tripunctata, a.k.a. “gribbles,” are bugs about the size of a pencil dot that look like tiny armadillos, and eat not only wood but also concrete. Speregen says he’s seen fifteen-inch-diameter columns that have been gnawed down, hourglass style, to three inches. The city has tried jacketing pilings in heavy plastic to keep the critters out, but it hasn’t worked well: Floating ice tears up the jackets in winter. “I never said this wasn’t a war,” says Speregen.
#7. Surveillance Systems
The U.S. Coast Guard operates anti-swimmer sonar systems, which are moved around as they’re needed in the harbor. The gear pings signals out, and displays hits—indicating unidentified people or boats—on a video screen. The Coast Guard also does pier sweeps: “If someone puts something on a piling”—say, an electronic device—“we find it,” says USCG gunner’s mate Dave Boles. In 2007, near Liberty Island, he recalls, “someone was spotted in a black Zodiac at night, and we had to check it out.” The mystery boater was never identified.
#24.Ice-cream Trucks
Reefs, because they are good places for edible plants and small animals, attract schools of fish. In 1969, in order to build a new artificial reef, the Department of Environmental Conservation dumped a bargeload of scrapped Good Humor trucks off Atlantic Beach, where they were eventually joined by (according to the DEC) “30,000 tires in three-tire units; 404 auto bodies; nine barges; the tug Fran S; a steel lifeboat; steel crane and boom; surplus armored vehicles; concrete slabs, pipes, culvert, decking and rubble; 530,000 cubic yards of rock from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers excavation project.” The pile is now known as a good spot for lobstering, and for catching black sea bass, blackfish, porgy, bergall, hake, and cod.
Really, go and take a read. It is worth the 5 minutes you’ll spend.