April 18, 2007

Baby whale 'Sludgie' swims into Brooklyn canal

As crazy as it sounds, there is a baby whale in Brooklyn's long-polluted Gowanus Canal, at the spot where it feeds into New York harbor, map. "Sludgie" is his nickname, NY1 is reporting this morning.

WNBC has whale footage online from last night, (at right.)

The whale, a juvenile minke whale about 15 long, appears to be in good health and shows no signs of distress, a rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation told the Associated Press.

Since its completion in the 1860s, the canal has hosted industries such as coal, cement, sulfer, soap and gas companies. Located near the iconic grain silos at the Red Hook ballfields, fishermen often line up at the Gowanus basin next to an NYPD's car impound yard. (And yes, they do catch fish to take home for dinner.)

Despite its murky past, the waterway is getting cleaned up. The Gowanus Dredgers canoe group notes on its website that it runs into a lot of wildlife in the urban canel: "On a typical day trip on the gowanus canal, you are likely to spot ducks, seagulls, loons, herons, geese, egrets, horseshoe crabs, blue crabs, fiddler crabs, baby flounder, shrimp, mussells, killifish, jellyfish and a racoon that has established residency near our launch site."

The Gowanus Lounge blog notes that a harp seal was seen in the Gowanus in 2003.

April 18, 2007 07:23 AM in Cheap Stuff, Kids, Out of Manhattan, Sightsology

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