Long Island Commercial Fishermen oppose Governor Cuomo’s artificial reef expansion plan
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to expand artificial reefs in the waters off Long Island is hitting a wave of opposition from commercial fishermen who say it would rob them of their fishing grounds and income. The state wants to double the size of the reefs.,, Malcolm McClintock, who owns two fishing trawlers, says he has already spent a long time learning where the existing artificial reefs are. He says more would create a larger problem for an industry already under stress. “One more thing piled on top of many other things. Every little bit hurts.” video, >click to read< 12:40
Here we go again taken fishing grounds from our fisherman ,don’tW we have enough problems the government keeps taken fishing grounds away from us .We need help our political leaders have no idea how hard it is to survive.We need help or there will be no one left to fish.
Before anyone goes off “shooting from the lip” before knowing the facts, they can be found here:
http://www.fishingunited.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=18058 —
The facts are:
Bonnie was not at the scoping meeting nor involved when the NYS DEC had all stakeholders not only speak, but provide written comments to be vetted not only by the NYS AR coordinator by those from state DEC and assistance from Stony Brook in weighting all the issues surrounding impact to the environment, various fishing activities from both user groups, mitigation/deconflicting, along with any negative economic impact to the commercial sector in this extremely small area of the ocean.
In fact it was specifically mentioned that any deployment of various AR materials such as vessels, rubble, highway construction materials or train cars, would be deposited within the remaining and existing AR footprints and that can be found right here with the current deployments as of Feb. 2021:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=dd55f0e62c8e4ad195afee458417934d
Further, all fishing activity data for either the recreational for-hire and commercial fishing sector can be found here:
https://www.northeastoceandata.org/data-explorer/
With the charts (based upon the latest data on this website) of the various activity illustrating extremely low/minimal to non-existent mobile finish and other consumer seafood products (again see the charts posted).
Bonnie is a friend, and one of the finest and most articular advocates we have had, not only in New York but in the region over the decades in fighting for fishermen on a number of fishery and now the wind-scams issues…. but in this case, and after talking to her many months before this article came out, I specifically pointed out that this is a “much ado about nothing” issue in the big regulatory picture.
I have been the person who fought for the commercial industry (both in attending, public and written comments) during the NJ-SMZ issue a few years back against the recreational and dive community prohibiting any commercial fishing activities on their ARs, and sadly there was not one bit of advocacy from Bonnie or anyone else at that time, and the reason why there is ban on any fixed gear or direct commercial fishing on all New Jersey state and EEZ ARs.
I am extremely troubled that anyone would think that this is an attack in the loss of any fishing grounds for the commercial fishing industry in this region, and to think that in using the example of a 600 foot vessel sinking in this area (such as a BOW MARINER), would also cause commercial mobile gear vessels to slightly alter their tows around this obstruction.
As much, I know Mark H. from Newsday, spoken to him many times either at the NYS DEC MRAC meetings or on the phone, and not only I, but another fishermen have pointed out that on this particular article, not only did not present all view points, but inflamed fishermen with such words as “catastrophic” and “destroy” when in fact there is no documented source that this would cause fishermen in this region to lose any income, and based upon decades of documented fishery science data from around the world, artificial reef creation repairs impacted areas and increases bio-diversity in ‘spatial’ habitats (you can easily find many peer reviewed documents online on this topic).
In these times where we have false, distorted or biased news reporting, I want these facts put out to the fishing industry. In closing, I can pass along that at the NYS DEC Artificial Reef meeting in 2020, there were a few people there from the dive community who have a relationship with the current governor, to the point where they spoke at his office in Albany just a few days prior to the meeting.
We want all user groups to not only benefit, but also to lessen any conflicts or negative economic impact due to these activities such as artificial reef expansion or creation in regions where commercial fishing activities occur.
Any questions, and I ask that Bonnie should be directly contacted to provide context to what was not properly presented in this Newsday story.
Thank you………..
Death by a thousand cuts. Where does it end?
Next up, Cuomo will propose to put all the fishermen into retirement homes, for short stays of course..