Someone chopped up Brooklyn's much talked about fire hydrant fish pond.
Vandals, undeterred by signs saying the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood tourist attraction was under surveillance, trashed the site Monday night, leaving residents and activists searching for an explanation.
Locals said vandals destroyed the strange pool of water around 9pm when they removed colourful gravel and hand-painted stones and hurled other decorations, killing around five of the pond's 100 gilled fish.
“[I found out] “I was just walking past when it happened and everything was destroyed,” said Devan Shah, a resident on the block. “It was really bad, there were shells everywhere, broken brooms. It was awful.”
Shah told the Post that he buried the fish, which had died overnight.
The aquarium, at the intersection of Tompkins Avenue and Hancock Street, was built in a two-inch hole in a wooden sidewalk filled with water from a leaking fire hydrant and quickly drew curious visitors but also drew the ire of online activists and at least one veterinarian, who called the project “animal cruelty.”
Shah, who has lived on Hancock Street for more than 10 years, is an architect who is working to expand the pond and turn it into a “landmark.” The pond's builders are raising $5,000 through GoFundMe to install a filtration system and help the fish survive in the pond through the winter.
But some people will be happy that the shallow “pond” will be gone for good and the fish will be relocated elsewhere.
“In these conditions, the fish would die anyway,” said veterinarian and Wet Pet Vets founder Ben Roosenbloom, “or at least, at this depth and water level, there's virtually no chance they'd survive the winter, not to mention chemical runoff from road salt.”
Rosenbloom called the vandalism a “tragic but relatively unsurprising consequence of this bizarre project.”
“Please move them to a suitable pond or larger aquarium,” the vet said. “Again, these are completely unsuitable environments for fish to live in, and this vandalism is just one consequence of that.”
Neighbours Emily Campbell and Max David “rescued” around 30 fish from the pond earlier this month with the aim of finding them new homes with more suitable living conditions.
Campbell said Tuesday that as far as she knows, no one would “perform or approve this type of vandalism.”
“It was destructive and disrespectful to the fish and the community,” she said.
“Unfortunately, this kind of vandalism was predictable. One of the reasons I tried to save the fish in the first place was that these people might realize that while the fire hydrant pond was a fun place, it wasn't a safe place for the fish.”
Undaunted by the vandalism, pond co-creator Hajj Malik Lovick arrived at the site before dawn to clean up. His aunt, affectionately known to neighbours as “Auntie Lovick,” was at the pond by 6am and began rebuilding it, adding soil from her own garden.
“I just decorated this place yesterday,” she lamented, “and I've been sitting here crying and crying, but now it's time to get busy.”
There are two security cameras installed in front of the pond, but site management staff said Lovick was told the cameras were not working.
“But I'm not blaming anyone either. I'm just focused on making sure the aquarium is OK,” he said.
The pond's creators aren't slowing down, posting on social media on September 1st about a giveaway of school supplies, backpacks and a “goldfish adoption” event.
Shah told The Post that organizers hope to install plexiglass and solar panels to secure a more permanent structure for the pond in the coming months.
“The city is the canvas and kids can see that it's not just bureaucracy and government,” Shah said.
“It's magic. It's a kind of magic in the city.”
