Saving Seafood

Businesses, environmentalists join forces to stop NY offshore wind project they fear will harm fishing, sea life

July 9, 2025 — They’re in uncharted waters.

In a rare move, businesses and environmentalists have joined forces in court to furiously fight New York’s Empire Wind One offshore project, saying that it will devastate both the commercial fishing industry and marine life in local waters.

“A decade ago, we said it would affect fishermen, fisheries, and guess what? The state didn’t care,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

“We are collateral damage — even though we feed people.”

The decade-long planned energy initiative, which began construction last April off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, faces a growing lawsuit from stakeholders in the tri-state area.

The Bronx’s massive Fulton Fish Market Cooperative, which employs around 1,200, and Nassau County’s Point Lookout Fishing Club, and the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association are some of the groups joining a legal action brought by environmentalists in the area.

Read the full article at The New York Post

 

NEW YORK: Fishermen Finding Windows Of Opportunity, Necessity Opened By Coronavirus

May 28, 2020 — In the early days of the coronavirus shut-downs, commercial fishermen were among those gut-punched by the impacts of an economy screeched to a halt.

Fishermen were told they could keep working, and the fish they sought were plentiful, but the value of fish at markets reeling from the forced closures of tens of thousands of restaurants and people fleeing into their homes was minimal.

But fishermen say that as the pandemic has settled into the habits of humans across the world, where one window of opportunity has closed, others have opened and helped the industry keep itself … well, afloat.

They have been buoyed by a steep drop in the amount of seafood being imported to the U.S. from other countries — the practice itself a plague that many fishermen said the country needs to rid it self of — and a populace that has still eagerly sought out seafood to eat while in quarantine.

With restaurants either closed or doing a fraction of their usual business, fishermen have relied more on selling to retail seafood markets, or at retail farmers markets, selling fish off the back of their boats or pickups and, in some cases, door-to-door deliveries, to peddle their catch.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express