Is the Hudson River fresh or saltwater?

For about half its length, the Hudson is actually a tidal estuary, where salt water from the ocean combines with fresh water from northern tributaries. The Hudson is tidal from the mouth of the Hudson in New York Harbor to the Federal Dam in Troy, a distance of about 153 miles.



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The “Salt Front” is the location where the river is 100 ppm salinity. 100 ppm salinity falls within acceptable drinking water standards.

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Women under 50 and children under 15 should not eat any fish from the Hudson River, including striped bass. Women who eat highly contaminated fish and become pregnant may have an increased risk of having children who are slower to develop and learn. Some contaminants may be passed on to infants in mother's milk.

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The short answer is “Yes!” The long answer is that it depends on when and where. Issues like sewage outflow and algal blooms keep many areas along the Hudson from being swimmable, particularly after rainfall.

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Saving the River's Fish. For schools of migratory shad, sturgeon, river herring, blue crab, menhaden and striped bass, the Hudson is an unimpeded corridor from the Atlantic to their ancestral spawning grounds.

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For Your Health- In 1976, the Upper Hudson River was closed to fishing due to extremely high amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in fish. These levels posed a high risk of possible harmful health effects in humans. Since 1976, the manufacture of PCBs has been banned and their use phased out.

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Yes, Bull Sharks, Dogfish, Great White?, Whale. 25 different species live in the area, and while most won't spend much time in the river all are capable, though for short times as they are salt water specific.

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Geology. The Hudson is sometimes called, in geological terms, a drowned river. The rising sea levels after the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation, the most recent ice age, have resulted in a marine incursion that drowned the coastal plain and brought salt water well above the mouth of the river.

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The Hudson River is the defining natural feature of a major region of New York State, familiar to millions who drive across its bridges, admire its grandeur from parks and historic sites, or ride the Hudson River Line railroad.

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The Congo is the deepest river in the world. Its headwaters are in the north-east of Zambia, between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa (Malawi), 1760 metres above sea level; it flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

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The Hudson River lacked the necessary spawning and nursery capacity to maintain salmon. The first major tributary, the Mohawk River, entering from the west above Albany, was impassable due to the 70 foot falls at Cohoes.

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Adult American eels live at the bottom of the Hudson River and its tributaries year-round, but those of breeding age will leave to spawn in the Sargasso Sea, hundreds of miles off-shore in the mid-Atlantic. Males mature at a smaller size; any eel over 2 feet is likely female.

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While there are orange individuals in the Hudson, these tend to be easy pickings for predators; one study of the diet of ospreys along the Hudson found that goldfish were a common prey of this fish-eating hawk. Thus the goldfish we catch are more likely to be olive green or brown than orange or gold.

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