a day ago
Slimmer, but Still One Big Oyster
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll get an update on the biggest oyster found in New York Harbor in perhaps 100 years and what its apparent good health says about how clean the Hudson River is now. We'll also get details on the first stop on Zohran Mamdani's five-borough tour of the city.
It's time for Big thoughts.
That capital B was not a typo. It's the name of an oyster.
Not just any oyster, but the biggest oyster found in New York waters in perhaps 100 years, according to the Hudson River Park Trust's River Project, which works to restore the Hudson estuary.
How big is Big? So big that when it turned up, the River Project had to get a bigger scale. At its most recent weigh-in 10 days ago, it turned out that Big had slimmed down since last year. The readout was 1,192 grams, or 2.63 pounds, down from just over 2.8 pounds a year ago. Big weighed 1.93 pounds when the River Project found it in 2018.
Since then, Big's fans have cast this unprepossessing creature as a metaphor for New York, which has a long history with oysters. And like the city, Big is a hub of high-density housing. At last count, two other oysters, 41 ribbed mussels and more than four dozen barnacles were making a home on Big's ragged, pockmarked shell.
Tina Walsh, an assistant vice president of the Hudson River Park Trust, said she was not sure when the first of those hangers-on had bound themselves to Big. It probably happened after Big was moved from where it had grown up, attached to a pier that was being rebuilt. 'We could guess that was somewhere a bit darker and shadier' than the spot Big has occupied ever since. More sunlight could reach Big's new neighborhood. There could be more food there, too, she said.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
