Brooklyn Bridge Transforms Into An Underwater Show

BROOKLYN, NY— The Brooklyn Bridge will become a window into a hidden world beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

An 18-minute video installation about Hudson Canyon, an underwater canyon about 100 miles off New York, will transform the bridge into a giant screen visible from Emily Roebling Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

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The projection begins at 7 p.m. and will repeat until 10 p.m.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the New York Aquarium, helped organize the installation with Brooklyn artist Anita Glesta.

Glesta built the video from imagery collected during a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expedition and paintings from a 1920s expedition to Hudson Canyon.

Underwater cameras did not exist during the earlier expedition, so the paintings provide an unusual record of the canyon's depths.

Saturday's scheduled showing has been canceled because of a forecast Nor'easter.

Hudson Canyon stretches along the ocean floor off the Northeast coast.

Its deep walls support whales, sea turtles, sharks and tuna, while commercial and recreational fishermen use its waters. Shipwrecks dating to the 19th century also rest below the surface.

The canyon sits within reach of New York's fishing grounds, but remains largely invisible to people onshore.

Conservation groups want to protect the canyon from oil and gas drilling and preserve its marine habitat.

The Wildlife Conservation Society nominated Hudson Canyon for designation as a federal National Marine Sanctuary in 2016. The Biden administration proposed the designation in 2022.

A National Marine Sanctuary designation would give the federal government additional authority to protect the area from activities that could damage its marine environment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency responsible for managing the sanctuary program, began reviewing the proposal after a public comment period in 2022.

NOAA continues to review proposed sanctuary designations, including Hudson Canyon, according to Marissa Anderson, a spokeswoman for the agency's National Ocean Service.

Scientists also could use the protected area to study how climate change affects deep-sea ecosystems. Ocean acidification and declining oxygen levels can threaten underwater canyons and the species that depend on them.