Why is the Hudson River so deep?

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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Underneath the surface of the Hudson River Estuary exists a wide range of river-bottom habitats-from the shallow, muddy bottom in the Tappan Zee and other shallow near-shore areas, to the deep, sandy bottom in the navigation channel that runs north to Albany.

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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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Conservation priorities include: Brackish and freshwater tidal wetlands that provide essential habitat for diamondback terrapins, fiddler crabs, rails and killifish, river otter, turtles, bald eagles and other raptors, marsh wrens and herons, crayfish and dragonflies and blackbirds.

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Predators like blue crabs and sturgeons do eat zebra mussels, but have never been shown to control natural populations. Research on new control measures, including biological controls, is ongoing, but the changes we've seen to the Hudson's ecosystem probably are irreversible or at least long-lasting.

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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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Hudson waters north of the dam to Hudson Falls are open to sports fishing on a catch-and-release basis only, and eating fish from any part of the river is discouraged, according to advisories from the state Department of Health.

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An estimated 100,000 people in the Hudson Valley rely on the Hudson for their drinking water.

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This results in a total of 59 bodies floating down the lower Hudson every year (49 or 50 from NYC, 5 or 6 from Bergen County, and about 4 from Hudson County). 59 divided by 365 gives you about 0.16 bodies per day.

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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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All of these creatures can be found in the Hudson River! Crabs, turtles and many types of fish can be found along the whole length of the river. Near the sea, even starfish, lobsters and sea horses can be found!

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Seawater from the ocean generally has a salinity level of about 35,000ppm. Freshwater draining into the Hudson River usually has a salinity level of about 25-50ppm.

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