Don’t look now, but people–well, at least, a handful of people–are fishing in the Gowanus Canal, catching fish and taking them home and eating them. We are not making this up. A very reliable source tells us that the fishermen put their hooks in the water near the Third Street Bridge and that they are catching bluefish up to a foot long. This, in and of itself would be interesting if that were the beginning and end of the story. It is not. The men are said to take bring the fish home and eat them. We’re told that they say that since the fish don’t actually live in the Gowanus (they swim into the Gowanus and leave), they are no less safe than any other fish that might come out of the East River or New York Harbor. Personally, we’ve always wondered about the safety of eating fish caught in, uh, local waters, but we know that plenty of people fish in Red Hook, Long Island City and other locales. But, the Gowanus Canal? It’s unknown if the fishermen are older people who figure that their time horizons are shorter anyway. No more than one meal of bluefish from the East River per month is recommendation because of PCB concerns. We do not believe there are established standards for Gowanus Canal Bluefish. Foot-long bluefish, friends.
(The fish picture here is a bluefish. The water is that of Gowanus Canal. However, the fish and the water did not previously exist in the same photo.)
7 responses so far ↓
1 Katia // Nov 6, 2007 at 8:18 am
“Bluefish à la Gowanus”.
Yummy. What’s next? Sushi quality White Fish?
I wonder if these fishermen glow in the dark
Ms. PardonMeForAsking
2 jake tuff // Nov 6, 2007 at 8:24 am
Kramer: BAD FISH, MESS YOU UP!!!!
3 Red Hook // Nov 6, 2007 at 8:28 am
If you’ve eaten any farmed fish from the supermarket lately, you’ve probably eaten something equally unyummy.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, toxaphene, heptachlor epoxide, lindane, gamma-chlordane, alpha-chlordane…
It’s all in there.
What you see is not what you get.
Those fishermen may not be as crazy as they seem.
4 Anonymous // Nov 6, 2007 at 11:14 am
gma had a segment this morning at all the yummy contaminated fish being imported from anywhere and sold to a clueless america.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/story?id=3825144&page=1
5 Anonymous // Nov 6, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I am a sailor and love NY harbor and in the summer I sail regularly out of Noryth Cove/Battery Park on weekends. Undeterred by the fact that we actually have to handle sails and sheets, one of the folks I crew with always trolls a line (sometimes two) as we run under spinnaker towards the Narrows. Invariably, with the mouth of the Gowanus abeam off our port side, he catches 5 to 7 pound bluefish specimens. That’s where they live and congregate. He does take them home and eat them. It’s an oily fish, and you want to eat it within hours of hauling it in. But still. I see stuff in the harbor that you don’t really want to know.
6 Red Hook // Nov 6, 2007 at 1:59 pm
…
I’ll meet you all at the V Spot in the Slope.
I may have to start eating all my meals there.
7 Frank Lee // Nov 6, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Actually, I’d rather eat a Gowanus bluefish than eat at V-Spot again. But I digress…