TINA, a new resident of industrial north Greenpoint, has a shock of green hair and a belly full of shellfish. She spends her days cleaning the polluted waters of Newtown Creek, the federal Superfund site dividing Brooklyn and Queens.
TINA is a 600-gallon fiberglass tank full of ribbed mussels and marsh grass built by the Newtown Creek Alliance, an environmental non-profit. The name is an abbreviation of Spartina, the scientific name of the marsh grass.
“Trying to create a real salt marsh is our ultimate goal,” Newtown Creek Alliance Executive Director Willis Elkins said in an interview. “But there’s limited places we can do that, and it takes a very long time and a lot of work to make that happen.”…