Tag Archives: Monmouth County

Middletown crabber’s family gets $2.75M settlement after deadly dock fall

The estate of Patrick Shopp, a commercial crabber who died from injuries related to a fall at the Belford Seafood Cooperative dock, won a $2.75 million settlement in a Monmouth County court, the family’s lawyer confirmed. Shopp initially suffered the injury on March 5, 2019. Christopher J. Conrad who represented Shopp said he fell through a broken board on the dock, lost his balance and dropped about eight feet down onto the deck of his crab boat, Scapper. Conrad said Shopp perforated his colon as a result of the fall, which required multiple surgeries over the the next 15 months. Shopp then sued Monmouth County, who owns the property, and the Belford Seafood Cooperative, which leases the property, for negligence for failure to maintain the property. >click to read< 13:03

Gas pipeline would ‘rip up the clam beds’ in N.J. for New Yorkers’ sake, foes say

Richard Isaksen has been clamming and crabbing in Raritan Bay and fishing lower New York Bay for 50 of his 63 years. It’s a hard life, but it’s the only one he knows, and all he wants for himself and his fellow fishermen is to be able to keep plying those waters. “We ain’t asking for nothing,” said Isaksen, of Middletown, who’s the skipper of the 65-foot fishing boat Isaetta and president of the Belford Seafood Coop in Monmouth County. “We just want to make a living.” But that could much tougher, Isaksen said, if state regulators join federal counterparts in approving the so-called Rarian Loop, a 23-mile underwater natural gas pipeline that would run along the sea floor across Raritan Bay and Lower New York Bay to Brooklyn. >click to read<13:36