Canarsie clamors for a ferry, but not everyone’s on board

by Chris Polansky
Canarsie Courier, Nov. 3rd, 2018

Robert J. Martinez Sr. works hard at his plumbing job. Spending his weekdays fixing clogs and snaking drains, the 29-year-old from East New York looks forward to a different kind of water come Saturday, when, like clockwork, he and his buddies meet up to fish at Canarsie Pier.

“We work all week,” Martinez said, watching his rods from his perch in a camping chair alongside three other anglers. “After that, you don’t want to be cooped up in the house. We come here, fish, talk smack.”

But Martinez fears his weekend ritual could be scuttled if recent talk of a potential new ferry landing at the pier comes true.

Long the subject of impassioned pleas at community board meetings, the ferry has been floated as an elixir for travel woes for the area of Brooklyn on the north side of Jamaica Bay. Last month, Alan Maisel, who represents the area in the city council, met with the borough president’s office for a feasibility meeting on bringing ferry service to his district.

The recent explosion of new ferry lines citywide, from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to Soundview in the Bronx, has been popular among commuters who can shave minutes off their commute by taking to the water rather than the subway tracks. Canarsie joins Sheepshead Bay as the latest Brooklyn neighborhood to petition for an anchorage.

Kenny Dhano, 58, of Coney Island, fishing down the pier from Martinez, reacted incredulously when asked his feelings about a possible landing. “A ferry?” he asked. “If they put a ferry here, we’re done.”

Dhano said he’s fished on the pier for 25 years because of the quality of fishing. “Blues, porgies, stripers, baitfish: you name it, it’s out here.” Dhano said he also used to fish across the bay in Rockaway, but a new ferry service there ruined fishing, and made Canarsie Pier his only good option.

“You can’t put a ferry here. This is our place,” he said. “We’re going to have a say. Trust me: we’re going to fight it.”

David Matten can speak to the nature of the fight Dhano’s up against. The 44-year-old is a longtime volunteer at the Long Island City Community Boathouse in Queens, and said his organization’s programming – free public kayaking, as an example – has been severely impacted by new ferry service.

“It’s been a big stressor. The general increase in traffic makes it more complicated,” Matten said. “Our program is scaled back. We don’t anticipate being able to run this safely every weekend.”

Matten said he brought his concerns to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which administers the ferry program, to no avail. “They’ll give lip service as to there being community input, but the opacity of it, the process itself is fait accompli,” he said.

“It is a hard calculus. It is a balance,” said Roland Lewis, president of the Waterfront Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for both increased ferry service and recreational uses of city waterways. “But I think it’s a happy problem. People are using the waterways for transit and recreation as never before.”

But Lewis’s happy problem is just a problem for Martinez, the fisherman from East New York. He sometimes kayaks from his neighborhood to the kayak landing at Canarsie Pier, and he sees the ferry as a threat to both his paddling and his angling.

“This is our hobby and our therapy, but it’s also how we eat. What are we going to eat?” he asked. “If this ferry comes, we’re only gonna catch dead fish.” ∎