One complication facing any expedition to Oyster Island, a speck of land about half a mile southwest of the Statue of Liberty, is that most of the time the island is not there. For this reason, perhaps, it is rarely marked on maps—another complication. One of the last charts to note Oyster Island by name was issued by the U.S. Coast Survey, in 1844, and since then it has been portrayed mostly as an underwater hazard—marked on maritime apps, for instance, as “foul area,” a mere navigational risk. It is a remnant of the oyster beds that surrounded Liberty and Ellis Islands through the late nineteen-twenties, by which time they’d been contaminated by sewage, industrial toxins, and dredging. Oyster Island is primarily a sunken island, but it returns occasionally when the moon is both full and especially close, as it was a few weeks ago, when an unusually low tide offered a two-hour window during which a small group landed there to explore.
Six people arrived on the island’s west coast in two groups, the first from Brooklyn, via the East River, a few miles away; the second about twenty minutes later, via the North American mainland (New Jersey). For the second group, approaching from Liberty State Park, the island’s desperately low profile made the first group’s members appear as if they were walking on water. By the time the second group arrived, the islandness of the suddenly appearing landform was clear: a parenthesis-shaped beach, thicker and higher in the middle, with rocky bars tapering at each end. Within a few minutes—at just after 4 P.M., when the water level at the Battery was at negative half a foot, the lowest for the afternoon—a few measurements were made. The perimeter of the island was calculated at four hundred and eighteen feet; the distance across at its widest point was approximately thirty feet. Standing on one end of the island and looking at the other end was like standing toward the middle of a subway platform and waving at a friend at the end of the station. If Oyster Island were a subway train at rush-hour density, it might hold eight hundred standing riders. More if they were willing to get their ankles wet.
A quick investigation of the island’s flora and fauna turned up razor clams; moon snails; lots of oyster shells without oysters; mussels, buried just beneath the surface of the island (seemingly held in place by large rocks, a possible geologic key to the island’s tenacity); a red-beard sponge, or Microciona prolifera; and, on the edge of the lee side, green seaweed that had colonized the inside of an automobile tire, a green harbor within a harbor. The surveyors debated the origin of the many miniature, toilet-plunger-shaped sand formations that were delicate and translucent when held up to the sun, eventually determining that they were the moon snails’ egg casings, called sand collars. In “Seashells of North America,” R. Tucker Abbott refers to moon snails as “among the most active of gastropod carnivores.” They can eat three to four small clams a day, holding the bivalves with their foot while drilling through the shell with the aid of a corrosive acid. Their abandoned shells resemble little modern man-made islands, concrete and impervious, though, like everything in the harbor, not.
After about an hour, the surveying of Oyster Island degraded into wading off its quickly disappearing shoreline, in water that, despite its bad reputation, was clear and pleasant and lovely. A picnic was laid out on a blanket on the island’s high point, at an elevation of maybe a foot above the water—though still technically below sea level. The view from what served briefly as Oyster Island Heights offered a panorama of the city: Todt Hill, on Staten Island; the hills of Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn; the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges fighting to outdo one another over the East River; the newly constructed hills of Governors Island; and the glass towers of downtown Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Jersey City, all mingling like a single spiny creature.
The second of Oyster Island’s two hours of life above water went more quickly than the first, or seemed to. By five o’clock, the moon was bringing in the tide. There was a frenzy of movement among the temporary islanders. The tide measured a negative quarter inch at the Battery, and a hurried second measurement of the perimeter came in at a hundred and twenty-three feet. Watching the island fade away was like getting a preview of New York City’s future, each wave coming closer to the dry center, the tide creeping up. Inundation happens fast, or faster than you’d think, even when you are expecting it, and, if it’s initially terrifying, once everything is safely stowed it becomes amazing again. Before you know it, you have returned to your boat, looking back at an island that has gone away. ♦
