The creation of the Institute for Urban Ports and Harbors in 1988 signaled MSRC’s continuing commitment to new approaches to balance conflicting demands in New York Harbor. For more than two decades, MSRC has served a significant role helping to develop strategies to confront a variety of environmental issues in this harbor, as well as other urban ports and harbors around the world.
Over the years, MSRC scientists have conducted many research and advisory projects surrounding the New York-New Jersey Harbor from developing a dredging and dredged materials management plan, to assessing the environmental effects of different strategies of sand mining in the lower bay of the harbor, advising about the environmental effects of creating artificial islands in different areas of the harbor, deepening the principal navigation channels, and developing certain areas of the waterfront.
One of the most comprehensive studies ever done of harbor fish populations was completed by MSRC researchers. Summarizing the nutrient distribution in the lower Hudson estuary and in the harbor, researchers estimated the nutrient flux through the mouth of the harbor using a variety of methods. In other projects, MSRC scientists have studied the potential effects of sea level rise on the infrastructure of New York City and collaborated to investigate the transport and fate of fish and shellfish larvae in the lower bay. MSRC’s physical oceanographers have investigated the two-layered flow in the East River to estimate the net flow through the East River. They also have studied the circulation in the harbor using the latest advances in current; measuring devices-the acoustic doppler current profiler-to help explain the shoaling of navigation channels and trapping particle-bound contaminants in the harbor.
Under current investigation is a new approach to an old problem-poor flushing of western Long Island Sound, which contributes to eutrophication and summer hypoxia. This approach makes use of tide gates across the East River, so that incoming tides cannot move nutrient-rich East River water up into the western Sound, but on outgoing tides, water is allowed to pass freely out of the Sound, through the river and harbor, and out to sea. Other MSRC scientists assisted in the development of special monitoring plans for water quality in the harbor to understand the causes and effects of the low dissolved oxygen problem in western Long Island Sound.
Harbor Video Premiere
The Institute created an educational video on the harbor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. The video, “Alive in an Urban Harbor,” had its premiere on public television in 1992. The video is below.