Newtown Creek Living Dock @livingdock - Tumblr Blog

With support from the Lush Cosmetics Charity Pot fund we were able to create a second Living Dock for Newtown Creek. Built during the 2018 Summer, the dock was towed and secured within the English Kills tributary in September 2018. We used a different design for this second dock and focused more on increasing space for salt marsh grasses. After a dormant winter the spartina grasses are now thriving and providing ecological benefit within this highly challenged and polluted environment.

Many thanks to Lush Cosmetics for the funding; Broadway Stages for providing construction space; Waste Management for offering a secure docking location; and Billion Oyster Project for towing/marine services.

The Living Dock Booklet is complete! Working with designer and illustrator Nim Ben-Reuven we made a little how to manual on why and how the Living Dock was made. We hope others draw inspiration and information from it. See the full .pdf here.

Working with artist Jan Mun to add some inoculated mycelium into the dock; finding new anemone species; ribbed mussels; spartina roots; spartina crate out of the water; and inspection of the dock at low tide.

#mycoremediation #ribbedmussels

Brooklyn Paper covers the project: “Toxic shock! Marine life returning to Newtown Creek”. Click here for the full story.

Living Dock Celebration event, October 18th, 2015. Photos by Mitch Waxman.

#newtowncreek #spartina #plankton #greenpoint

Photos from our October 18th event for folks from the community to come check out the Living Dock.

Greenpointers covers the Living Dock: “Newtown Creek Just Became a Little More Hospitable to Living Creatures”. Read full story here.

Join the Newtown Creek Alliance as we celebrate the completion of the Living Dock project. Funded by the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund, the Living Dock is a custom designed and built floating structure providing much needed clean habitat for various marine organisms present within Newtown Creek. We have chronicled the project on this website, and now invite the public to come meet the fish, shrimp, salt marsh grasses, mussels and other marine organisms that call the dock home. Don't believe such animals live in the Creek? Well, come see for yourself:

October 18th, 2015 Noon to 4pm Kingsland Ave at North Henry Street See map here.

In addition to collecting information about the biodiversity of organisms found within the Living Dock, we are also surveying for population variance across the different crate habitats. The surveys consists of removing the crates from the water one at a time and letting animals fall out into a fiberglass tray placed underneath and counting specimens in the tray plus any found remaining within the crate itself. It is not a perfect surveying method but gives us some idea as to which crates certain animals prefer most. Crate A9 continues to be the most popular for fish and especially shrimp (see photo above). Here are the numbers from the September 16th survey for fish, shrimp and crabs found within non-plant based crates.

A3 (clam shells) = 1 mummichog

A6 (eel mop) = 6 mummichog, 54 grass shrimp

A7 (sediment) = 3 mummichog (juvenile)

A8 (oyster shells) = 7 mummichog, 43 grass shrimp

A9 (loose rope + oyster shells) = 27 mummichog, 152 grass shrimp

B3 ( oyster shells) = 5 mummichog (juvenile), 16 grass shrimp

B7 (stone) = 18 mummichog, 31 grass shrimp, 3 blue crab

B8 (eel mop) = 14 mummichog, 48 grass shrimp

#mummichog #grass shrimp

Visit to the Living Dock w/ North Brooklyn Boat Club: showed off some grass shrimp and killifish living in the crates, plus saw a cormorant resting on the dock (pictured) as we arrived and muskrat swimming nearby as we departed. Photos by Patterson Beckwith.

#cormorant #spartina #northbrooklynboatclub

Aerial photo + Crate Key which shows contents plus ‘planting’ dates.

Workday installing more salt marsh plants in the dock. Now 8 crates total of Spartina.

#spartina #newtowncreek #floatingwetlands

Lots of new species seen in the dock today. First, we found four very young blue mussels growing on old oyster and clam shells. These are in fact some of the first blue mussels seen in the Creek at all! Also found a ribbed mussel within one of the crates, which is a very positive sign, since we have been so focussed on this species in the Creek. We also spotted a few slipper snails, growing only in the travertine crate which was also heavily populated with marine worms. The old clam shells have attracted less sea squirts than the oysters, but many more striped anemones, seen here.

#blue mussel #ribbed mussel #anemone

A few recent dock observations include heavy barnacle on the sides of some of the crates, which can lodge the crates underneath the angle on the dock; as well as a few dead blue crabs. We witnessed some dead crabs last summer and hypothesize that they may enter the crates when they are smaller and get trapped inside as they grow.

American Eel found in one of the habitat units (dense oyster shell unit). Plus lots of other critters like shrimp and amphipods.

#americaneel #amphipod

Many of the crates in the living dock feature substrate that acts as a mini reef habitat for small animals. This was what was living in just one of the crates (filled with broken up travertine): three blue crabs, nine juvenile killifish, one full grown grass shrimp, about ten juvenile shrimp and dozens of amphipods. Much of the crate bottom and some of the stones were covered in various tunicate species.

Installed two features near the dock’s waterline to improve it’s function.

1. A plastic mesh guard at the surface of the water to prevent floatables (trash) from getting into the dock and clogging up the crates.

2. A platform just above the water level to entice wading birds (after already witnessing a heron and egret on the deck).

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