Bush Terminal Piers Park Site Visit

by Sally Kong

On June 20, Thursday the team got to visit Bush Terminal Piers Park to familiarize ourselves with the location and the local ecosystem. I was so enthralled by the diverse lifeforms in this unassuming space and I'm excited to learn more about it in the coming months! (ex. I wish I had a photo of the glorious bioluminescent ctenophora I saw in the lagoon! Yes! In broad day light!)

 

Bush Terminal Piers Park during low tide when the water divides into outer and inner lagoons

The oyster reef at Bush Terminal Piers Park was installed in 2016 with one million spat-on-shell oysters. The reef consists of 10 steel cabinets with steel files like the one in the photo below. I was amazed by how much life surrounded the oysters in this file from the red sponges, sea lettuce, shrimps, tunicates, crabs, toad fishes, and more!

 

Rayven holding one of the oyster cabinet files at Bush Terminal Piers Park

For our initial trial, we sampled 1L of water from the outer lagoon near the shore since it wasn't as accessible to be waded in. Then we sampled 1L of water from the inner lagoon closer to the oyster cabinets.

 

Sally sampling water from the outer lagoon.

Afterwards, we promptly brought the water samples to Genspace which is also located in Sunset Park Brooklyn for vacuum filtration with a PES 0.22um membrane filter.

 

Vacuum Filtration Setup for Water Samples

 

PES Membrane Filters preserved in Ethanol

There is already some visible differences in the filtered material from the outer and inner lagoon water samples, and we're curious to learn more about it!

We're hoping to secure the funding soon to order a Qiagen DNeasy kit and be able to extract the DNA and send it out for sequencing!