A decade ago, herds of harbor seals began
visiting. Seals hadn’t been seen in the harbor
in a century, when the local population was
hunted out of existence. They now number
in the hundreds. These immigrants the
National Parks Department has decided to
protect. When they’re around, you can see
the seals from the long pier off the Staten
Island boardwalk, the ruins of the old quar-
antine buildings behind them.UPPERBAYISLANDS
urn north and pass under the
Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
Ahead are islands that were
once defensive and are now our
welcomesigns, starting with
Liberty. More jobs in the city
are currently associated with
tourism than with manufactur-
ing (four times more) or the
tech industry (two times) or even, by a hair,
finance, which makes Liberty Island the hos-
pitality industry’s Wall Street: In 2008,
about 33 million people visited New York;
last year, it was 65.2 million, a record high,
with tourists crowding out locals like human
mile-a-minutes. Standing in line with the
over 4 million annual passengers to Liberty
Island, I hear the ticket sellers repeatedly and
patiently explain the months-long wait to
visit the statue’s crown and then, as consola-
tion, sell 20,000 tickets to its base every day
at $18.50 each.
Further up, at the mouth of the East
River, sits Governors Island, the city’s his-
toric seat of military control. The Dutch
built a fort there while colonizing Manhat-
tan, and when the British began coloniz-
ing, they took it for themselves. Ditto the
British colonists when they turned into
Americans, until, finally, in 2003, the U.S.
government, having decommissioned the
base and turned it into a monument, sold
the island to New York City for a dollar. It
has now been rebranded as a recreational
paradise: bike rentals, taco trucks, oysters
and artists galore—artists being the high
coastal grasses of the city ecosystem, a
native species that has to be hand-culti-
vated to survive.
Private residential development is forbid-
den on the island, which does not mean you
can’t spend the night. For $150, you can rent
a premium tent for two, or for $550 a luxury
tent with a harbor view. Up next: a spa and
eventually, the thinking goes, a hotel. Even
the New YorkTimesasked, “Is this the end of
Governors Island?”T
( II.)(cont.onpage40) PHOTOGRAPH MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH DJI AND HASSELBLAD.