There is life in the Gowanus. (Just don’t try to swim in it.)
Back in April, activist Christopher Swain tried to swim the length of the Gowanus Canal. He made it about an hour, before climbing out and proclaiming, “It’s just like swimming through a dirty diaper.” One of the most polluted bodies of water in the US, the Canal was designated as a Superfund site in 2010. When I tell people I study what lives in the Gowanus Canal, the next question I get is usually “There are things that can actually live in there”? But spend even a few hours peering into the oily, obscured murk and you will see all kinds of life forms making it work, just like their fellow New Yorkers, in substandard housing. Some of these life forms are familiar and some, not so much.
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