FLASH UPDATE: YouTube of USCG video of Orange Sun/dredge collision here. How could this happen??  Nonsequitur:  Don’t ever think anything happening in the harbor goes unseen.

I toyed with putting the term “UFO” in the title, but that would be a red er… herring. UFO expands to “unidentified fishing objective;” as in what could this fleet possibly be netting from the Bay? If I were a fish, that statue with the long arm would spook me.

 

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Here’s a closer-up of the same boat. I can’t quite make out the name.

 

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My guess is bait fishing: mossbunker aka menhaden, or

 

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what some call porgies.

 

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I believe Miss Callie comes out of Belford, or at least once did.

Kurlansky in The Big Oyster cites a 1620 Dutch description of harbor life as including, “bass, cod, weakfish, herring, mackerel . . . whales, porpoises, and seals” (22) Later in the book he describes New York harbor oysters exported around the world.

Joseph Mitchell begins his 1959 essay “The Bottom of the Harbor” with these sentences: “The bulk of the water… is oily, dirty, and germy. Men on the mud suckers, the big harbor dredges, like to say that you could bottle it and sell it for poison.”

Fifty years beyond Mitchell and 30 years beyond the Clean Water Act, I’m happy to see evidence of improved water quality. I might swim here, keeping my head out of the water, but I’m not ready to eat the fish yet.

Photos, WVD.