By David S. Hirschman

East River Fish
It’s what’s for dinner.

On a recent weekday afternoon near 96th St. on the East River promenade, a bluefish crusted with blood, maybe two feet long, lies dead on the octagonal flagstones while 10 Hispanic men hover over it admiringly. One of the fish’s parchment-thin fins is raised in what looks like a delicate gesture of surrender, and its acrid necrotic stench has begun to filter into the air, mingling with cigar smoke and exhaust fumes from the cars passing a few feet away on the FDR Drive.

"It’s a good one," says Tommy Rodriguez, a retired man whose belly peeks out from under his shirt. He’s the blue’s slow-moving captor. "Probably two or three pounds." Dinner for one person definitely, maybe two, someone comments.

"People actually eat the fish you catch here?" I ask.

"Oh yeah," says Rodriguez. "Of course. I’m going to give this one to my neighbor."

"Aren’t you worried about all the toxic shit in the water?"

"Like what?"

"I don’t know, mercury or something? There’s all kinds of stuff in there. They just found that Russian woman’s body in the water."

"Oh yeah," he says, pointing across the river, "Right over there in Queens."

"And you still eat the fish?"

He shrugs and gives me a cryptic smile. "If you gonna die, you gonna die anyway."

All year, you can spot the fishing poles tied with bungee cords to the guard railings over the water, up near the narrow turquoise walk bridge to Wards Island. On the benches there are usually about 10 or 20 men of indeterminate employment drinking beer and waiting for the fish to bite. On a good day, when a school of stripers or blues comes by, they’ll catch as many as five or six fish, but everything is dependent on tides and mojo.

The fish that they do catch, however, while not entirely poisonous, are nonetheless filled with all the toxic chemicals that you’d expect would be in something that came out of one of the city’s waterways. As late as the 80s, much of the city’s raw sewage was still pumped directly into the East River and the Hudson. Today the water is much cleaner than it used to be, but a recent study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration still found that every species living in the East River had some form of toxic contamination, including arsenic, lead or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Morris Natal, a tall, heavyset carpenter with a chipped front tooth seems to have some sense of the dangers.

"The Health Department says you’re only supposed to eat, like, two fish per month," he says, "Because of the PCBs." When pressed, he doesn’t know what PCBs are, but he knows they’re not good for you. The Department of Health seems to think that eating a fish a week is alright, while the Attorney General warns against more than one a month.

Natal, who has been fishing here for more than five years, says he doesn’t eat what he catches; he just does it for the sport. "Some of these guys, they sell the fish, though," he says.

"Where?" I ask.

"I don’t know. Everywhere. Fish markets in Harlem. All over the city. People buy them." He says that fish from the river usually bring about half retail value.

"The Chinese people, for some reason they love [river fish]," says Colette DiBenedetto, who owns the A&M Bait and Tackle Shop on 118th St. in East Harlem. "I don’t know if it’s restaurants, but they’re always buying the fish." She insists these catches are clean.

"It’s good, white meat," says DiBenedetto. "In the 70s, when the sewer lines were there, the fish you caught used to be all sick, but now they’re okay. You maybe get a fish that’s sick here and there, but mainly they’re good."

As a result of the Clean Water Act of the 70s, which mandated that municipalities treat their raw sewage before releasing it into public waterways, the waters around New York have gradually become much cleaner. New York now treats nearly all of its sewage (except for a small portion that mixes with rainwater during heavy storms), and many species of fish, absent for many decades, have actually started to return to the area.

"There used to be less variety," says Natal, "Used to be, people threw their carriages and all sorts of junk in the water. Now we got sea robins, these little fish and a lot of horseshoe crabs and snappers. Every once in a while you see a dolphin."

"Really?"

"Yeah, last year one came through here," interrupts Rodriguez. "I saw it. And a few years ago there were these two of them that got trapped and the fish police had to get them out."

But this doesn’t mean the water’s clean by any stretch. The PCBs alone pose a major risk to anyone eating these fish. A National Academy of Sciences committee has stated, "PCBs pose the largest potential carcinogenic risk of any environmental contaminant for which measurements exist." Because PCBs in the body mimic estrogen, women of childbearing age and their infants are particularly susceptible to a variety of development and reproductive disorders.

Brian Cunningham and his fiancee Del Powers still eat their catches pretty regularly. Cunningham is parked on a sunny city bench a little further uptown on the promenade, and is picking through 30 or 40 cubes of cut-up butterfish on a damp sheet of newspaper, deciding which one to use next.

"Bait?" I ask.

"Yeah. But I should’ve got blood worms. Blood worms work best."

"Why?"

"Because when you stick the hook in, they’re a little bloody and the fish can smell it."

"And you eat all the fish you catch?"

"I filet them myself," says Cunningham proudly, gesturing to Powers, "and she steams them."

Cunningham says he and Powers eat as many fish as he can catch. The two definitely don’t look very healthy. Both are on the verge of obesity, and have this blank, spaced-out look in their eyes. It’s unclear how much of this can be attributed to the fish, but let’s hope she doesn’t get pregnant anytime soon.