Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Atlantic Shores Wind scoping evokes Hurricane Sandy trauma

October 22, 2021 — Some Jersey Shore people who recovered and rebuilt their homes after Hurricane Sandy say projects like Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind must be part of the renewable-energy answer to climate change and rising sea levels. The storm legacy loomed large in this week’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management scoping sessions.

The New Jersey shoreline “is in critical danger of being destroyed by climate change,” said marine science teacher Amy Williams of the New Jersey Organizing Project, a community group that arose after Sandy struck in October 2012.

For others, the prospect of 800-foot turbine towers on the horizon 10 miles off Long Beach Island presages another kind of disaster.

The location is “completely inappropriate” said Wendy Kouba of the LBI Coalition for Wind Without Impact, a group calling for BOEM to include its Hudson South wind energy area – 30 to 57 miles offshore – as an alternate site in the environmental impact study for Atlantic Shores.

With two major offshore wind projects – the Atlantic Shores joint venture by Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America, and Ørsted’s Ocean Wind on a neighboring lease to the south off Atlantic City – New Jersey has become a battleground for the wind industry’s fiercest critics and supporters.

Commercial fishing conflicts are one major issue for the New Jersey projects. Barnegat Light and Cape May are ports for the thriving sea scallop fishery, while large volumes of surf clams are landed in Atlantic City, Wildwood and Point Pleasant Beach.

Both fleets have engaged with BOEM and wind developers for years, foreseeing their dredge boats could be effectively excluded from future turbine arrays with their towers and buried power cables.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Regenerating New York Harbor, One Billion Oysters at a Time

December 13, 2019 — When Hurricane Sandy struck New York on October 29, 2012, it deluged every neighborhood it hit. Seven years later, many neighborhoods—including Coney Island, Canarsie in Brooklyn, and points all along the shore of Staten Island—are still recovering. Others, such as Staten Island’s Fox Beach, were destroyed in their entirety, never to have residents again.

With these events in all too recent memory, New Yorkers know how susceptible they are to climate change and are at the forefront of developing new approaches to the climate crisis, with the city’s young people getting especially involved. As the recent youth climate strikes that brought hundreds of thousands to New York’s streets attest, the younger generations—those who will be most affected by climate change—are taking concrete steps to try to turn back the tide, quite literally.

One of the programs that is engaging youth is the Billion Oyster Project. While the project’s founding goal aimed to to make the “waters surrounding New York City cleaner, more abundant, more well-known, more well-loved,” it has a more pressing role in the time of accelerating climate change: creating oyster reefs that can help blunt storm surges that accompany hurricanes by breaking up the waves before they hit land.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Man Pleads Guilty to False Fishery Disaster Relief Request

October 31, 2018 — A New Hampshire man has pleaded guilty to giving false information in an effort to get fishery disaster relief funds following Hurricane Sandy.

Prosecutors say 56-year-old Dave Bardzik, of Ossipee, submitted several false and/or altered records to the state Fish and Game Department in 2015 in an attempt to qualify for the funds.

Investigators noted discrepancies between the 2015 submission and previous records Bardzik had completed. He admitted that he created the records because he would otherwise not have qualified for funds.

Required criteria included that “for hire” vessels, like Bardzik’s, must have taken at least 15 trips in three of the previous four years in which at least one New England groundfish species was harvested.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

NEW JERSEY: How Hurricane Sandy benefited New Jersey wetlands

October 24th, 2016 — Sometimes there is an upside to disaster, even one as big as Hurricane Sandy.

For birds, there were bright spots after the storm, Paul Castelli, senior wildlife biologist for the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, said at the fall meeting of the New Jersey chapter of the Wildlife Society on Wednesday.

Sandy flattened the dunes at Forsythe’s Holgate property at the southern end of Long Beach Island, said Castelli, giving beach-nesting birds such as piping plovers more habitat to raise young.

“Many of them are endangered or threatened, and since the storm their numbers and success are through the roof,” Castelli said.

The storm also unleashed a tide of funding for the area, including about $10 million for the refuge to both make repairs and strengthen its resiliency against future storms.

There are also funds for organizations to carry out marsh restoration and living shoreline projects.

The meeting’s theme was “Coastal Restoration in the Face of Climate Change.” It was held in the old refuge headquarters, which is being replaced by a new building under construction. The Wildlife Society’s mission is to promote excellence in wildlife stewardship.

Read the full story at Press of the Atlantic City 

New York State gives fishing industry extra time to seek Sandy aid

December 7, 2015 — New York State extended the application deadline for marinas, aquaculture facilities, commercial boat operators, harvesters and other fishery industry professionals to apply for superstorm Sandy recovery money.

The new deadline to apply for the Superstorm Sandy Fishery Disaster Grant is Jan. 29 and is open to businesses and individuals that lost more than $5,000 in revenue or gross income as a result of the 2012 storm.

Eligible businesses must have at least $15,000 in annual earnings and be in operation at the time of the application.

The Governors Office of Storm Recovery and state Department of Environmental Conservation will issue up to $3.6 million in grants, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Eighty applications have been filed since the grant program was announced in September.

Read the full story at Newsday

 

Federal grants aim to help fishing industry businesses hurt by Sandy

September 22, 2015 — Local fishing industry businesses that took losses due to Super Storm Sandy will now have access to $3.6 million in grant funding being made available by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The grants are aimed at reimbursing sectors of New York’s fishing industry impacted by the October 2012 storm. Sectors include: bait and tackle; for-hire fishing boat operators; marinas; commercial harvesters; commercial seafood dealers, shippers or processors; and aquaculture facilities.

Fishing businesses in eligible counties must complete an application and provide documentation to demonstrate more than $5,000 in revenue or gross income loss as a result of Superstorm Sandy, and have at least $15,000 in annual earnings in one of the eligible fishery sectors. Businesses in Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester counties are eligible to apply.

Read the full story from Riverhead Local

By the numbers: Sandy sunk New Jersey fishing

September 6, 2015 — The fishing sector in New Jersey suffered nearly $300 million in estimated damages and lost earnings as a result of superstorm Sandy, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The report — Social and Economic Impacts of Hurricane/Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy on the Commercial and Recreational Fishing Industries: New York and New Jersey One Year Later — shows that the 3,100 fishing-related businesses in New Jersey provided 21,900 jobs and generated $342 million in 2014, with most of that labor and economic impact emanating from the Jersey Shore.

Read the full story from the Asbury Park Press

NEW JERSEY: Christe Administration Announces $2.1 Million in Federal Grants to Help Fishing-Related Businesses Impacted by Superstorm Sandy

July 16, 2015 — The Christie Administration announced that 266 fishing-related businesses will share more than $2.1 million in federal grants to help them recover some costs resulting from damages sustained as a result of Superstorm Sandy.

The grant program focused on helping smaller businesses. Owners of bait-and-tackle shops, commercial dealers, commercial fishermen, for-hire party and charter boat operators, marinas and those involved in shell-fish aquaculture businesses were eligible to apply to the DEP for grants of up to $10,000 to help offset some of the costs of the storm on their operations.

“The DEP and our Marine Fisheries staff have worked tirelessly since Sandy to help these businesses get back on their feet,” said DEP Commissioner Bob Martin. “Our economically vital commercial and recreational fishing industries are coming back after the devastation caused by Sandy. This grant program will help our smaller fishing-related businesses recover some of their losses.”

Grants were provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of a federal fishery disaster declaration for states impacted by Sandy.

Applicants had to document a minimum of $5,000 in losses as a result of Sandy. Grants were awarded to help with repair or replacement of equipment that was not covered by other programs. Activities already paid for out-of-pocket as part of a business’ or individual’s recovery effort also were eligible.

Read the full story at the Cape May County Herald

 

 

The last of the Jersey Shore fishing piers

VENTNOR, N.J. — July 2, 2015 — Some days on the fishing pier, all you catch is a breeze, some sunburn and bloodworm guts on your pants.

No matter how much you emulate the old-timers, copying their baits and mimicking their little twitches with the rod, sometimes you just haul in seaweed while “Harold the cement guy,” “Father Frank” and “Kenny the cop” are killing kingfish left and right.

That’s why they call it “fishing, not catching,” one saying goes. If that one doesn’t make a flustered fisherman feel better, the regulars and ringers who can’t seem to miss a fish will tell you “a day out fishing always beats a day at work” and that’s hard to argue against – unless you’re Lou Kanter.

“Some guys are here an hour and that’s it. That’s me. If I’m not catching nothing it’s like golf. I can’t hit the ball for nothing. It’s so aggravating when I golf and to me fishing is the same way. Some people think it’s relaxing. Yeah, it’s relaxing if you’re catching something,” Kanter, the affable piermaster at the Ventnor Fishing Pier, said on a recent weekday morning.

“You’ve got the same people here every day, usually. Some guys just come out here to put a cigar in their mouth and talk to their buddies. Other guys can fish. I’ll ask Harold, ‘How many fish you catch today?’ and he’ll say ‘Oh, I caught about eight kingfish today.’ Harold does cement.”

There are a million reasons to visit the Jersey Shore, although millions of tourists and residents do the same few things: beach, boardwalks, clam bars, regular bars and roller coasters.

There are also, according to New Jersey’s Division of Fish & Wildlife, about a dozen saltwater fishing piers in the state that don’t see the same crowds but offer unrivaled views, fish stories, an ocean of stars at night and sometimes even fish, depending on the tides.

Read the full story from Philly.com