April 25, 2025 — For the third time in less than two years, a hunk of dock fell into New Bedford Harbor on Wednesday afternoon, again raising red flags about neglected port maintenance. The collapse injured no one but dropped a metal shed into the water.
The asphalt-surface dock and the shed dropped into about 20 feet of water late Wednesday afternoon outside the Sea Watch International processing plant along Antonio Costa Avenue, said Gordon Carr, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority.
He said it happened when no one was around, at about 3:30 p.m. The sunken storage shed had stood in an area that had been blocked by Jersey barriers since a neighboring section of the dock collapsed a year ago.
Carr said there was a “small sheen” on the water Wednesday, but it was not clear what, if anything, was in the shed and if anything spilled into the water.
“There’s a boom out there now to contain” any possible contamination, he said, referring to a long, floating tube used to corral spills of oil and other substances on the water. He said representatives of Sea Watch, a clam and quahog operation that uses that pier to unload catch, were trying to figure out what was in the shed.