From Westway promises to be boon for fishermen by Jerry Kenney in the Daily News on Monday March 7, 1983
When critics say something’s fishy about the controversial Westway Project, they might be right. But, if all goes as planned, one group that will come out smelling like a rose is the fishermen.
This may sound strange since some opponents insist construction of the new highway would ruin the striped bass habitat in the area. There’s no question about that. But if Westway replaces the amount of habitat to the extent that has been promised, the project could be the best thing that ever happened to the area’s fishermen.
And it should be a blessing for the bass, too. After dredging and filling is completed, shoreline reefs, modern fishing piers and facilities will be constructed at several sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and even the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
But first, it must be determined exactly how much of the striper grounds actually will be destroyed and where additional habitat can be constructed. The N.Y. State Dept of Transportation has
retained the engineering firm of Lawler, Matusky and Skelly, specialists in marine environmental surveys, to do this job. The firm has its own boats, but it has also contracted the R/V Onrust, a 55-foot research vessel owned by SUNY at Stony Point, and the surveying has been going on since mid-December.
Marine biologists have been taking fish, bottom and water samples at sites on both sides of the Hudson River, between the George Washington and Verrazano Bridges, and up the East River to Rikers Island. They plan to have 26 sites thoroughly surveyed by June and, thanks to an unseasonably mild winter, the project is right on schedule.
Westway must provide a satisfactory environmental impact statement before it gets a permit from the Anny Corps of Engineers that will allow the dredging and landfill portion of the Westway project to proceed.
It may come as a surprise that fish live in the waters around Manhattan. You can blame that on the ultra-environmentalists who insist that even a fishing line would rot in these waters because of the pollution. I suppose they feel the only way to draw attention to the problem is to exaggerate the severity of conditions – and they’re probably right. Sure, there’s pollution here and it has probably killed millions of fish. But the situation has improved in the last 10 years.
AND IT’S NOT only striped bass that cavort under and around the Hudson and East River piers. Bluefish come through here regularly in the summer and lately weakfish have been streaking through.
Last week, I was aboard the the RN Onrust on one of its research runs. The boat is commanded by Capt. Chris Stuebe and Steve Seymour of Stony Brook, while Ron Alevras, the principal fisheries biologist from LMS, supervised his team.
The itinerary for the day was five separate sites at which the crew trawled bottom and mid-water, recording whatever marine life they brought up. The first site was between piers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a bottom trawl yielded small flounder, tommy cod, grass shrimp, crabs and sand worms.
The trawl off Rlkers Island brought up a 12-inch striped bass, a ling, some small flounder and the usual crabs, shrimp and sea worms. Similar catches were made in Erie Basin, along the Brooklyn waterfront, but a couple of lO-inch long eel-like gunnels were’ discovered in soda cans brought up from inside the Owls Head Piers.
The most productive trawl was between two Hoboken piers, where silt had filled the once 30-feet depths to about six feet. A bottom drag brought up 36 two- and three-inch-long striped bass well as other small creatures.
SURVEYS OF THIS type at the 26 sites are designed to determine which areas are best suited for habitat construction.
“From what we’ve seen of the habitat, we can build better places for the fish,” Alevras said. “We’re mostly concerned about the bass, but the way the river is silting-in, the bass habitat will probably disappear in another five or 10 years anyhow. The new construction we will provide will insure this future habitat.”
