New York Is Missing Out on Benefits of Fishing Licenses

There are a handful of hilarious YouTube and Instagram web pages that are dedicated to the stupidity that people who own boats display out on the water.

The videos are primarily based in Florida, around a few of the inlets around Miami that are notoriously rough, but nonetheless lure boaters who are clueless about the danger and destruction that an ebb tide standing wave can pose (although the popularity of the channels and the obsession nowadays in this country with being filmed doing anything has created a “send it” community of boaters who launch themselves into situations they are clearly unprepared for just for the sake of being on screen).

I chatted with one of the videographers over the winter on the jetty of Boca Inlet while he waited for the tide to get running and he said that the popularity of the videos made by the company he works for funds salaries for a dozen full-time videographers, editors and web admins — in case you were wondering where all the people who used to work in restaurants and shops went.

But I digress. In seeking to expand the resources for its “look how stupid Americans are” market, one of the channels has seized on the popularity of the viral videos taken by various boaters at launching ramps around the country of others who have made a fatal error of one type or another and either ended up with their truck in the water or their boat in some precariously un-trailered circumstances. This channel now has a videographer dedicated to just documenting the tomfoolery that takes place at boat ramps.

Again, Florida is the prime location for documenting this reality-run-amok. Florida is clearly the nexus of the universe where stupidity and boating mix.

It was while watching one of these videos recently that I marveled — between laughs and head shakes — at the spectacular boat ramp the videographer was set up across from. This ramp was clearly at a large waterfront park somewhere in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area. There were ramps for eight boats to be launched all at once — as long as someone wasn’t jack-knifed sideways across two of the launching positions, as was the case at least twice in the video. At each launching station, there was a wide, stable finger pier and nearby there were long lengths of docking where boats could wharf off to load and unload away from the traffic at the ramps themselves. There were bathrooms and fish cleaning tables and park benches and boat rinsing stations and … why the hell don’t we have ramps like this here in New York???

Granted, this isn’t Florida, where owning your own boat is a standard accessory of life like owning your own lawnmower or Weedwacker, so we don’t need facilities quite as robust as the one described above. But our boat launching facilities here on the East End, especially, but pretty much across Long Island are abhorrent — run-down, poorly constructed, and barely used precisely because using them is an additional chore to the chore of boat trailering.

But it’s not just boat ramps, either. Florida bristles with enormous fishing piers jutting out into the ocean and bays, purpose-built to help fishermen who don’t have boats access the state’s natural resources. Beneath bridges and causeways are broad parking areas, well lit and arranged to allow fishing from the shore.

The bounty of access to the waters also comes with another important feature that we are sorely lacking here in New York: regulation enforcement. The Florida FWC (Fish & Wildlife Commission) is a ubiquitous presence at launching ramps and popular fishing spots. They patrol the shore-side causeways and piers and the waterways in speedboats that would make Crockett & Tubbs envious. I’ve even had an FWC officer come up to me in the middle of the night at a spillway in the middle of a city where you wouldn’t think to keep an eye out for a fisherman as much as you would a mugger (which is who I figured I was about to encounter when I heard his footsteps behind me).

Here on Long Island, in 2022, there were two — TWO — environmental conservation officers covering the whole of the five East End towns. This year, if we are lucky, there will be five. Fishermen love to complain about the DEC and especially its encon officers. The department suffers from a poor reputation for the way it enforces things, which is largely personality based (New York has some difficult personalities, if you weren’t aware) but is also very much a product of enforcement being spread far too thin and it’s a travesty the extent to which our fishing regulations are allowed to be violated day in and day out by the uninformed and unscrupulous.

So, finally, you know what else Florida has that New York doesn’t that is the reason they have all of the above benefits to their natural resources (and the point of this column)? Fishing licenses.

More than a decade ago, New York botched the introduction of a statewide fishing license for residents and nonresidents alike. The license proposal was entirely reasonable, but the messaging was terrible and the effort to shoot it down was led by the East End, where the ancient colonial era powers of the Town Trustees in East Hampton, Southampton and Southold was used to attack the new requirement in court.

The way the licenses were tailored could have been better, but the effort to undo the regulation was sorely misplaced and 15 years later our boat ramps are still deteriorating, our fishing piers are pathetic and our enforcement of the rules that are supposed to protect our precious natural resources are effectively nonexistent.

It is time to stop the absurdity of objecting to state fishing licenses and let New York and New Yorkers reap the outsized benefits of the paltry annual fee they would have to contribute. The East End should be leading the charge for licenses, not against them.

More on this in the future.

Catch ’em up. See you out there.