Fin

What It’s Like Fishing in Post-Sandy New York City Waters

No fluke.
No fluke. Photo: New York Magazine

The Rockaways are still a disaster zone, so it’s with some compunction that writer Monte Burke gathers his lures and rod and catches all kinds of midsize striped bass just 200 yards off the Rockaways shoreline. “We could still catch occasional glimpses of the boarded-up houses and ruined cabanas,” he writes at Forbes, noting that fishing boat captains lost their ships, the guides lost more than a month of business, and even with the jetty out of sight, the storm effects are still felt. Not much has been made of it, but last month, Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank declared an unprecedented fishery resource disaster in the fishing communities of coastal New Jersey and New York. “In 2010 alone, New Jersey and New York commercial fisheries landed almost 190 million pounds of fish, valued at more than $210 million dollars,” they note. Recreational fishermen went out on 10 million trips and caught 5 million pounds of fish in the same year. The damage to the local fishing economy is still unknown. [Forbes via SamSifton/Twitter, NOAA]

What It’s Like Fishing in Post-Sandy New York City Waters