Hannah Frishberg, writing for Gothamist:

A group or rays — also known as a “fever” — was spotted swimming through Newtown Creek, a notoriously filthy estuary of the East River, last weekend.

“I have not heard of anybody seeing rays in the creek before,” said Willis Elkins, executive director of nonprofit the Newtown Creek Alliance. The group had shared a now viral clip of the rays — which appear to be of the native cownose variety — in the creek’s murky waters.

It’s hard to say exactly what the significance of any sort of specific new wildlife sighting is,” Elkins said, but it’s still “very exciting.”

Newtown Creek, which runs between Brooklyn and Queens, is among America’s most polluted waterways. The refineries that once lined its banks dumped, leaked and spilled between 17 million and 30 million gallons of oil into its waters over decades — significantly more than the Exxon Valdez disaster, which is considered one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.

I was aware of the historical business practices that led to the pollution of the East River, but until today, I did not realize the true extent of the issue.