Saim Siddiqui
It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The wind blew past my face, a refreshing burst of wind, as I stood at the helm of the ferry. The smell of the water was revitalizing, and the sounds of the waves hitting the sides of the boat were oddly calming. “Today’s gonna be a good day,” I thought to myself. I was dead wrong.
We were told that we were going to Freshkills Park, to observe the environment. In my head, I pictured all the times I walked through Central Park and admired nature. Well, you can take that picture, make a circle around it, and put a line through it, because approximately 90 minutes after I had that thought, I found myself in a weird type of overalls, wafting through waste deep of what I can only describe as a ton of sh**, pardon my French.
It wasn’t until almost two years ago when I truly started appreciating nature. I honestly don’t know what inspired the change, but before my senior year of high school, I would pick sitting in and watching TV over taking a stroll through the park any day of the week. But now, I would choose the latter, and I feel all the better for it. That’s why when I first heard about Bioblitz, I was quite excited. If only I had known what was to come.
For most of the afternoon, my peers and I, along with a PhD advisor, waded through waist-deep waste (no pun intended), while most of my friends were at parties and/or BBQs.
Reading this back, I sound a lot more grumpy and salty than I thought, but I wasn’t completely disappointed. It was really an enlightening experience. I always knew that New York had been using Staten Island as a dump, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. Another thing was that seeing all of this pollution near the water, and seeing all of these dead organisms just increased my awareness of how important it is to be wary of our surroundings, of our environment, and how much work we should be doing towards improving it.
All in all, as salty as I may sound, I was glad I attended Bioblitz, and I’m grateful that Macaulay set this up for us.