Tag Archives: Hank Lackner
N.J. commercial and recreational fishing groups aligning against coming offshore wind farms – ‘This is our farmland’
Capt. Hank Lackner docked a 100-foot trawler in Cape May on a recent day after unloading a catch of squid that might end up as calamari on someone’s plate just about anywhere in the United States. Lackner fears that offshore wind farms coming to the waters off the New Jersey coast in the next few years could threaten his business. Other commercial and recreational anglers, along with the Recreational Fishing Alliance, a political action organization, share his concerns. Jim Donofrio, founder of the RFA, and one of the most outspoken critics of offshore wind, says the industry creates too many issues for fishing that haven’t been fully addressed. “We want them gone,” Donofrio said. >click to read< 07:55
Inside Montauk’s commercial fishing industry
Montauk is not only the biggest commercial fishing hub in New York, it’s one of the largest in the Northeast.,,, Unlike Gurneys’ or the iconic Shagwong Tavern, Montauk’s commercial fishing boats don’t attract investors eager to keep their businesses afloat, and their property (boats, gear and permits) is not easily transferable from one person to another.,,, John Nolan, his wife, Laurie, and their son John Nolan III are owner-operators of the F/V Seacapture,,, >click to read< 07:35
Commercial Fisherman Plead With State Consultant For License System Overhaul
The young men who work the decks of Hank Lackner’s dragger, Jason & Danielle, spend up to three weeks at a time far over the horizon from their homes in Montauk, toiling in heat and high seas. “My crew just spent 13 days at sea, working 20-hour days—these are true commercial fishermen,” Mr. Lackner told a consultant who has been hired by the state to craft new licensing guidelines at a meeting in Southampton last week. “They spend 200 days a year on my boat, they don’t have a lot of chances to get out. They shouldn’t be eliminated from this process. We don’t want them to go away. We have to figure out a way where the [landings of] trips they worked gets them some kind of credit for being on the boat.” For years, young commercial fishermen have been stalled from setting out on their own by the state’s embargo on issuing “new” licenses, and by inflexible rules for transferring existing licenses from those who are leaving the industry to those trying to get in. >click to read<10:58
Testimony: Young fishermen being driven from Long Island fishing industry
A generation of young fishermen are being driven from the industry by an antiquated licensing system that makes it difficult if not impossible to transfer permits, fishermen said at one of several state meetings last week. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has hired a consultant from Maine to meet with commercial fishermen across the metropolitan area over the next month to compile proposals for fixing the system.,, Norman Stiansen, a commercial fisherman from Hampton Bays, said his son Peter recently gave up on becoming a commercial fishermen because he couldn’t get the needed licenses. >click to read<08:50
Highest Hurdle For Deepwater May Be Winning The Trust Of The Region’s Fishing Community
Deepwater Wind faces two years of review by some 20 state and federal agencies, and millions of dollars in scientific survey work covering hundreds of square miles of the ocean, to answer the questions the agencies will pepper them with about the wind farm’s effect on the ocean around it.,, Part of the federal process that the company must follow, in attempting to show that the 15 wind turbines they want to build in the ocean east of Block Island can coexist with those who make a living at sea, requires that they appoint a “fisheries representative” >click here to read< 09:47
“You’re going into our fishing grounds,” – Fishermen Demand Answers on Wind Power Plan
An effort by Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to construct the South Fork Wind Farm approximately 30 miles east of Montauk, to alleviate the concerns of skeptical fishermen over disruption or destruction of their livelihood took an incremental step forward when the company’s president and vice president of development addressed a standing-room-only crowd at East Hampton Town Hall on Monday. Concerns remain, however, with commercial fishermen demanding to see data that Deepwater Wind has promised but has yet to produce, along with assurances that they will be compensated for losses resulting from construction or operation of the wind farm. click here to read the story 08:08
Deepwater struggles to assuage concerns of fishermen
Commercial fishermen peppered representatives of Deepwater Wind this week with concerns, questions and “what-if” scenarios about the planned offshore wind farm’s feared impacts on marine life and the men who work the waters for a living. The company, which is planning to spend more than $700 million to construct 15 wind turbines in the ocean 30 miles southeast of Montauk, walked a standing-room-only audience at the East Hampton Town Trustees meeting on Monday night through the coming permitting and presumed construction process that will follow. Its officials also tried to again assuage the concerns of fishermen about the effects the South Fork Wind Farm will have on fishing. click here to read the story 08:13
Fishermen Demand Answers on Wind Power Plan – “You’re going into our fishing grounds,” Hank Lackner, owner of the 90-foot trawler Jason & Danielle, told the Deepwater Wind officials. Visibly angry, he demanded details as to how fishermen would be compensated for interruptions, likening that compensation to the incentives offered to the town, which he said are effectively bribery. “When I can’t fish where I have for decades . . . and have to change my business operations, what are you going to do?” click here to read the story18:36 12/14
Fishermen urge state to sue Feds over Fluke fishing limits
Several dozen fishermen, women and lawmakers last week urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to make good on a promise to sue the federal government over New York’s disproportionately low share of the fluke fishery. At a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall last Wednesday, the gathering of fishing interests sought to unify their agenda before a meeting with top state officials scheduled for next month. The commercial fishery for fluke was shut down in September for the first time in recent memory. It reopened Oct. 1 with a 50-pound daily limit. New York gets 7.6 percent of the commercial fluke quota, while North Carolina and Virginia get more than 20 percent each. click here to read the story 07:37
Fishermen Oppose Commercial Ban – national marine monument exclusion is unfair and unnecessary
Fishermen believe a monument in the Mid-Atlantic is unnecessary and allege it was not based on science but pressure from nongovernmental environmental groups, including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Resources Defense Council. To exclude commercial fishermen while allowing recreational fishing makes no sense, fishermen contend. They also claim the monument will not only fail to prevent harm to non-target species such as pilot whales, but will increase interactions with them. “It’s a huge blow,” Hank Lackner of the Jason and Danielle, a trawler based in Montauk, said. “And there was no need for it.” Mark Phillips, who fishes for fluke, squid, and haddock from the Greenport-based Illusion, agreed. “The funny thing, there is no coral there. It’s all sand and mud, and I’ve dragged all of that bottom. A handful of boats out of Montauk have dragged it all. There is no coral, period,” he said. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agree that many of the areas in which trawlers fish are devoid of coral, according to Ms. Brady. Read the article here 12:08
