Beczak on the Hudson

We drove up to the Beczak Environmental Education Center in Yonkers this morning. W was part of a class about food chains in the Hudson River. The view of the river and Palisades Mountains was absolutely breathtaking. The class was held inside the center. They learned about how striped bass eat atlantic silversides, which eat amphipods (like sand fleas), which eat zooplankton, which eat phytoplankton, which drink drops of water which may contain the PCBs from certain factories. So since people eat striped bass, people are also ingesting PCBs. They also discussed (and demonstrated with a large model) how fresh water from the Adirondack Mountains flows down the Hudson into the Atlantic Ocean. We were in an area of the river where the water is partly fresh and partly salty - "brackish". I forgot my camera, so I found a picture on google of what the view looks like (although this one is in the fall, and it's now spring, well, you get the idea, lol).

After the class, a few of us hung around and went down to the shoreline to climb on the rocks and throw pebbles into the river. It was pretty windy and chilly, but the kids didn't seem to notice. It took less than 30 minutes to get home. I love that there are so many new places to see so close to our house. I feel we haven't even scratched the surface of all that is out there!