Boston Harbor
Boston Harbor is a natural harbor located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeast.
History
Since its discovery by European Settlers in the 1630s, Boston Harbor has been an important port in American history. It was the site of the Boston Tea Party as well as almost continuous backfilling of the harbor until the 1800s. More recently, the harbor was the site of the $4.5 billion dollar Boston Harbor Project, a massive court ordered cleanup that began in the 1980's and continues to today.
Before the project the water was so polluted that The Standells made a song called Dirty Water about the sorry state of the Charles River, which is still popular with Red Sox Fans, and played regularly at Fenway Park.
Since the writing of the song, the water quality in both the Harbor and the Charles River has significantly improved, and the project has dramatically transformed Boston Harbor from one of the filthiest in the nation to one of the cleanest. Today Boston Harbor is safe for fishing and for swimming nearly every day, though there are still beach closings after even small rainstorms caused by filthy, bacteria laden storm water and the occasional combined sewer overflow.
Geography
Boston Harbor is a large harbor which constitutes the western extremity of Massachusetts Bay. The harbor is sheltered from Massachusetts Bay and the open Atlantic Ocean by a combination of the Winthrop Peninsula and Deer Island to the north, the hooked Nantasket Peninsula and Point Allerton to the south, and the harbor islands in the middle. The harbor is often described as being split into an inner harbor and an outer harbor.[1][2][3]
Outer harbor
The outer harbor stretches to the south and east of the inner harbor. To its landward side, and moving in an anti-clockwise direction, the harbor is made up of the three large bays of Dorchester Bay, Quincy Bay and Hingham Bay. To seaward, the two deep water anchorages of President Roads and Nantasket Roads are separated by Long Island. The outer harbor is fed by several rivers, including the Neponset River, the Weymouth Fore River, the Weymouth Back River and the Weir River.[1][2][3]
Dredged deep water channels stretch from President Roads to the inner harbor, and from Nantasket Roads to the Weymouth Fore River. Some commercial port facilities are located in the Fore River area, an area which has a history of shipbuilding including the notable Fore River Shipyard.[1][2][3]
Harbor islands
Boston Harbor contains a considerable number of islands, 34 of which are part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. The following islands exist within the harbor:
- Bumpkin Island, Button Island
- Castle Island
- Calf Island
- Gallops Island, Georges Island, Grape Island, Great Brewster Island, Green Island
- Hangman Island
- Langlee Island, Little Brewster Island, Little Calf Island, Long Island, Lovells Island
- Middle Brewster Island
- Moon Island, Nixes Mate
- Outer Brewster Island
- Peddocks Island
- Raccoon Island, Ragged Island, Rainsford Island
- Sarah Island, Shag Rocks, Sheep Island, Slate Island, Snake Island, Spectacle Island, Spinnaker Island
- The Graves, Thompson Island
Two former islands, Castle Island and Deer Island, still exist in a recognizable form. Castle Island was joined to the mainland by land reclamation, whilst Deer Island ceased to be an island when the channel which formerly separated it from the mainland was filled in by the New England Hurricane of 1938.
Two other former islands, Apple Island and Governors Island, have been subsumed into land reclamation for Logan International Airport.
Aquaculture
In 1996, the Boston Globe reported that Mayor Tom Menino and MIT engineer Clifford Goudey were planning a program to use the great tanks on Moon Island as a fish farm or a temporary home for tuna or lobster in an attempt to implement a recirculating aquaculture system in Boston Harbor.[4][5][6] The prices of both these fish types vary by season. The plan was to collect and store fish in the tanks and sell the fish at higher prices when they were out of season. Nothing has come of this plan to date.
See also
- Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area
- Dirty Water
- Save the Harbor / Save the Bay]
- bostonharbor.com]
References
- ^ a b c "Boston". GlobalSecurity.org. Retrieved October 12 2006.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|dateformat=ignored (help) - ^ a b c "Through the Eyes of a Mariner: Touring the Port of Boston". Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management. Retrieved October 12 2006.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|dateformat=ignored (help) - ^ a b c "Boston Harbor and Approaches." Coast Pilot 1 - 35th Edition, 2005. NOAA Office of Coast Survey. 35th Edition. May 15, 2005. Cite error: The named reference "pilot" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ Anand, Geeta, "Harbor island studied for fish farm Mayor envisions raising flounder, tuna and lobsters", The Boston Globe, October 13, 1996. Quoting from the article: "The Boston mayor and the MIT engineer were talking fish. With the city's skyline in the distance, they stood beside one of four long trenches on Moon Island that may soon be teeming with lobsters, bluefin tuna and summer flounder. For nearly two years, Mayor Thomas M. Menino and MIT engineer Clifford Goudey have shared a dream. Now they are wedded to a plan. Together, they are trying to turn the century-old sewage trenches on the harbor island into one of the largest fish farms in the country. 'This could be the new industry for the city,' the mayor said. 'We have the ocean, we have the reservoirs for the fish, we have what we need to make this work.'"
- ^ Best, Neil A., "Preliminary Design of a Recirculating Aquaculture System in Boston Harbor", Masters Thesis, Ocean Engineering, MIT, February 1997. Technical Advisor, Clifford A. Goudey.
- ^ Marcus, John, "Scientists Test Once-Polluted Harbor’s Crop Potential", Los Angeles Times, Sunday, January 11, 1998
