We’re very tempted to call this Department of Environmental Protection boat, the Jamaica Bay, which was docked at the Carroll Street Bridge yesterday as part of the Gowanus Goes Green event, the Turd Boat. That, however, would be wrong, as it is intended to pick up far more than crap from the surface of the bodies of water that it traverses. A “skimmer boat” is one of the solutions that’s been put forward for keeping the canal clean, since the problem of “floatables” as they’re called in the business, will continue as long as there are Combined Sewage Outflow events in the canal. (There will like be more and not less as time goes on given planned new development and the increasing severity of storm episodes.) In plain English, the sewers flow directly into the canal when it rains hard enough, dumping both trash and crap into it. The skimmer boat captures what’s floating on top. As the photo shows, there are some issues with the method, given what is skimmed and what isn’t.