Suffolk eyes establishing seafood processing  facility to aid commercial fishing

Suffolk County is moving closer to a government-backed seafood processing facility, officials said, as it explores potential sites and the type of work to be done before putting a proposal out to public bid. 

At the New York Seafood Summit in Riverhead on Friday, County Executive Edward P. Romaine spoke in support of the idea and a separate panel led by the Cornell Cooperative Extension discussed the services it could offer from a list of potential locations, from Babylon to Montauk.

A processing facility able to fillet fish, shuck and can shellfish, and process kelp could help create new markets for fish that are not economically viable to sell now, experts said. Mechanical fillet machines could help process and market more porgies, a highly abundant species. The market for bait would also get a boost. And processing could help a burgeoning market for sugar kelp, while creating new markets for shucked shellfish, including canned and frozen foods.

"We’re working on that," Romaine said in an interview at the summit, which presented findings from a survey of fishing interests across the county. A request for proposals is being drawn up by the county’s economic development team. Romaine also said the county is moving ahead with a planned Seafood Festival at Smith Point County Park in August.

It is unclear how much a processing facility would cost and who would own and operate it.

"The feasibility study will present options for construction as well as future management configurations for the county’s consideration," Romaine spokesman Michael Martino said.

Any level of help would be welcomed by fishing interests, who face challenges from cheap imports, tighter fishing restrictions and increased costs. Many endorsed the idea of a central facility in Riverhead or Calverton — near waterways and available land. Yaphank, as Newsday previously reported, is another potential location on county land. But there could be more than one.

"What we found is that because there are so many things that are needed, such as filleting and ice, that you can’t just do it all in one building and say Yaphank," said Amanda Dauman, fisheries specialist at Cornell, who led a presentation that surveyed fishing interests about the plan. "You need to have it where the people who need it are."

In addition to processing, most survey respondents emphasized the need for basic services at fishing ports, including more reliable electricity and fresh water, ice machines and proper lighting. Most commercial fishing docks are in need of repairs.

Amanda Jones, director of operations at Montauk Inlet Seafood, said there’s a need for more ice houses and dockside fish processing. Right now the only icehouse is in Montauk, the state’s biggest fishing port, but could vanish after a recent sale of Gosman’s, which owns the ice facility.

In addition, she said, the lack of dockside processing for squid, among other species, drives fishing boats to Connecticut and Rhode Island to land fish and fuel up.

"Without dockside processing we lose that business during squid season," she said. Inlet has requested permits for an icehouse in Montauk.

Billy Reed, who operates a trawler at Shinnecock Inlet, said he’d support "shoreside processing where we can process porgies with a fillet machine."

He said such a plan also could make dogfish, an underutilized fish that is costly to ship to New Bedford, Massachusetts, for processing, viable for the local market.

"A shoreside facility would benefit multiple layers of society," he said, by making cheaper cuts of fish more widely available. "We could use seafood to feed everybody on a fair, equitable plan."

For Stephanie Villani, who co-owns Blue Moon Fish in Mattituck, the needs are basic.

"We have no current [fish packing] place at the [Mattituck] inlet," she said. "We need ice, we need infrastructure, more electric. We need all those basic things."

For Sue Wicks, a retired WNBA champion who operates Violet Cove Oysters in Moriches Bay, the prospect of facilities to help process sugar kelp offered promise.

"We need processing to get that big bulky hundreds of pounds of kelp off of the boat, onto a dock and into a truck," she said. Refrigeration and drying facilities also are needed. "It’s a very fragile crop and we need processing."

Fish that would be best served by a processing facility include squid, porgies, dogfish, bluefish and oysters, Cornell found. The ability to freeze fish for market could "ease some of those availability concerns" during the offseason, and "stabilize prices," Dauman said.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.