Saving Seafood

New York’s commercial fishing sector appreciates aid, but worries about continued challenges for restaurants

December 10, 2020 — New York is now taking applications from commercial fishermen and other fishing businesses seeking relief from losses they suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And while fishermen are thankful for the assistance, an industry leader said more needs to be done, including helping restaurants.

The funding, a total of $6.7 million, comes to the state through the CARES Act passed in March. That COVID relief package included a total of $300 million in direct aid to commercial fishermen, with the Department of Commerce determining how much each state, tribal nation and territory received.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told The center Square the pandemic created a perfect storm for the seafood industry, and the federal aid will help in an “unusual” year.

“Fishermen are essential workers,” Brady said. “No one wants a handout. These guys just want to be able to work, but in this case, they were able to work, but … the markets for fish were so depressed that your choices were go in and get paid at 1970s prices or don’t go in. But then you don’t have an income.”

A couple of items that would really help the industry recover would be for restaurants to rebound and for the return of fish processing in the state.

Read the full story at The Center Square

Making Waves: Offshore Wind and Commercial Fishing

November 17, 2020 — Join NF editors Kirk Moore and Jessica Hathaway for a discussion on the future of offshore wind power with panelists Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance in Washington, D.C.; Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in San Francisco; and Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association; Montauk, N.Y.

Ask questions for the panel in our Member Forum — details below the video.

We will be talking about the latest developments with proposed wind energy projects off the East Coast — and how soon those proposals will come to the West Coast. Topics include the upcoming federal environmental impact statement on the cumulative impacts of Vineyard Wind and other East Coast projects; the status of wind energy planning off the West Coast; the state of relations and communications between fishermen and the wind industry; and fishermen’s concerns with safety and adequate vessel traffic lanes between turbines.

Bonnie Brady: “It’s really important for fishermen to lock arms and work together before they get run over by these things on their historic fishing grounds.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

She’s got the scoop: Bonnie Brady of Montauk, New York

October 2, 2020 — “I picked up the chalk,” says Bonnie Brady. “That was the end of my life.” Twenty years later, Brady, 57, recalls the meeting that changed the course of her life and put a scrappy journalist on her path as a doggedly determined advocate for fishermen and ocean habitat.

“I had never really paid attention to the fishing thing,” Brady adds. She came to fishing through marriage after landing in Montauk, N.Y., an iconic Long Island fishing town.

Like many community fisheries advocates, she recalls that time of her life via council proceedings: “It was around 2000, Amendment 13” to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan.

“Dave was out fishing, and he said, ‘Can you go to this meeting and find out what happens?’” Brady adds that once she got to the fishermen’s forum hosted by the Cornell Cooperative Extension, the room was awash with a range of complaints from a crowd of fishermen. She stood up, grabbed the chalk and started to ask questions. “If you were to list the top five problems, what are they? I put myself in the middle. Being a reporter, I wanted to see what the main points were. It was obvious these guys had real issues. I had never paid attention to any of that before I met Dave.”

Brady married Montauk fisherman Dave Aripotch in 1998. “He’s a trawler — fluke, scup, black sea bass, squid, whiting. He used to groundfish, but he leases his quota now,” Brady says. “He started going offshore gillnetting when he was 15. He would sneak off unbeknownst to his parents. He would take off for a couple of weeks!”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Feds delay restart of onboard fisheries monitoring on commercial boats

June 1, 2020 — Federal fisheries regulators on Tuesday delayed a plan to restart a program requiring commercial fishermen to take observers on fishing trips starting Monday, following widespread criticism of the move.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, citing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, said it would restart the program Aug. 1.

Even while setting the Aug. 1 date, “we recognize that this public health crisis continues to evolve and changing conditions may warrant re-evaluating these plans,” NOAA said in a statement.

“Should our plans regarding redeploying observers and at-sea monitors change, we will announce any changes as soon as practicable,” the agency said.

Representatives for local fishermen said the restart should be pushed back further.

“Come back to us when there’s a vaccine” or effective COVID-19 treatment, said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, based in Montauk.

Read the full story at Newsday

NEW YORK: Fishermen Finding Windows Of Opportunity, Necessity Opened By Coronavirus

May 28, 2020 — In the early days of the coronavirus shut-downs, commercial fishermen were among those gut-punched by the impacts of an economy screeched to a halt.

Fishermen were told they could keep working, and the fish they sought were plentiful, but the value of fish at markets reeling from the forced closures of tens of thousands of restaurants and people fleeing into their homes was minimal.

But fishermen say that as the pandemic has settled into the habits of humans across the world, where one window of opportunity has closed, others have opened and helped the industry keep itself … well, afloat.

They have been buoyed by a steep drop in the amount of seafood being imported to the U.S. from other countries — the practice itself a plague that many fishermen said the country needs to rid it self of — and a populace that has still eagerly sought out seafood to eat while in quarantine.

With restaurants either closed or doing a fraction of their usual business, fishermen have relied more on selling to retail seafood markets, or at retail farmers markets, selling fish off the back of their boats or pickups and, in some cases, door-to-door deliveries, to peddle their catch.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

Long Island fishing industry takes a hit during pandemic

May 13, 2020 — On Tuesday morning, commercial fishing boats sat idle in the water at the Montauk town dock—an uncommon sight, especially this time of year. But lately, it’s become the new normal.

Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said that the majority of East End commercial fishermen, who are essential food production workers, are reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve lost a tremendous amount of sales since many restaurants closed.

“When the restaurants closed, we lost the market with which we sold our fish,” Brady said. “We need to find ways to create markets, to create processing on the fly, long-term create mobile fish markets—anything and everything until we get our present system back in order.”

Pot fisherman Jim Auteri, who catches lobster, was hoping for a banner season.

Read the full story at Fox 5

NEW YORK: Fishermen See Market Dry Out

March 27, 2020 — Unable to sell a 1,000-pound catch of fluke last week, Capt. Chuck Morici of the dragger Act 1 spent three days filleting the fish at Montauk commercial dock and offering it for free straight from his boat. On Saturday morning, he gave it away from the back of his pickup truck in downtown Montauk, a big handwritten sign announcing, “Free Fish.”

In a normal year, the religious period of Lent, when many people give up eating meat, tends to drive up seafood demand and prices. But the global COVID-19 pandemic has thrown normal to the wind.

In addition to the closure of most domestic restaurants, foreign markets such as Spain and Italy, which before the pandemic were historically large buyers of squid landed on the East End, for example, have stopped all imports. As a result, many fish buyers have implored fishermen to stay ashore.

Prices have fallen dramatically, said Bonnie Brady of Montauk, the executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. “Everyone is frustrated that the buyers are not buying fish, but at the same time the restaurant market has dried up, and New York has always been beholden to the fresh fish market because we haven’t had processing to help us.”

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Bonnie Brady: A Diversity of Experience

October 25, 2019 — “What you see is what you get,” is how Bonnie Brady, a longtime Montauk resident and EH Fusion Party candidate for East Hampton Town Board, described herself in an interview with Star staff this week. “I’d like to think of myself as a fair, honest person, someone who would work their butt off” for constituents.

As executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, Ms. Brady has long been a proponent of that industry’s interests, which in recent years means she is also a vocal opponent of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, which fishermen fear will disrupt or destroy their livelihood.

But Ms. Brady’s résumé illustrates a diversity of experience that may have few equals among East Hampton candidates past and present. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina and worked as a reporter for The Star in the early 1990s. Living in Washington, D.C., she worked for then-Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat from New Jersey. While living in the nation’s capital, she applied to the Peace Corps, and in 1991 went to Cameroon, in West Africa, where she coordinated primary health care for pre- and postnatal women and their infant children.

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Long Island Offshore Wind Farm Moves Forward, Despite Local Opposition

October 4, 2019 — New York inches closer to its first offshore wind farm as developers reached a lease option agreement with a Montauk fishing cooperative.

Orsted, the Denmark-based developer, announced the agreement to build an operations and maintenance facility for the South Fork Wind Farm on property owned by Inlet Seafood in Montauk.

The wind farm’s employees will use the facility to dock their vessels and transfer personnel to and from the turbines.

Dave Aripotch is a commercial fisherman and a co-owner of Inlet Seafood. His wife, Bonnie Brady, is with the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. Brady says Aripotch didn’t sign the agreement and will refuse any profits from it.

Read the full story at WSHU

NEW YORK: Press Sessions In East Hampton Focuses On The Future Of Wind Farms

October 3, 2019 — Offshore wind farms have been pitched as a critical cog in the drive to reduce the use of fossil fuels to power American life, while trying to fend off the worst effects of climate change.

But will the environmental and economic problems the construction and operation of the giant wind turbines cause be outweighed by the long-term benefits? And are state and federal regulators, or the wind farm developers themselves, doing enough to offset or protect against those problems?

These were the questions put to the panel of experts at the first “Press Session” event held in East Hampton last Thursday afternoon, September 26, at Rowdy Hall. Representatives of the fishing and offshore wind industry, environmental and renewable energy advocates, and local government officials each shared their perspective.

Last week’s Press Session panel included Dr. Francine Kershaw, a large marine mammals expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council; Bonnie Brady, a commercial fishing advocate; Gordian Raacke, a renewable energy advocate; Jennifer Garvey, Long Island development coordinator for Ørsted, the company proposing to build the South Fork Wind Farm; East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby; and State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express