It’s no secret that the marinas and supporting businesses all along the NJ bayshore are struggling. The classic predictable human response to environmental pressures is increased tension among members of the community. That’s not unique to us. It happens everywhere. But the environmental pressure is certainly increasing and tensions are rising. The watermen here, pushed out of their docks this year, are furious that another marina doesn’t face the same costs as they do here. The fact is that I echoed their complaints without knowing anything about the actual costs of either marina.
By coincidence, I talked with two other nearby recreational marina owners earlier in the day on other unrelated business. I feel for them. They are really working hard to make a sustainable future. I try to be supportive. I remind myself that I have a lousy track record of predicting the future so maybe my negative forecasts for the industry will turn out dead wrong. But to me, it doesn’t look good for recreational fishing as a business. The only bright spot I see is the local commercial fishing and aquaculture businesses.
Tonight a guy I really don’t know from Fortescue who is known by some of the other marina guys here, was outraged by something I said in the newspaper and put in writing about the tension here. He seemed ready to make a scene to call me out for not knowing the facts. He was right, I don’t know that facts. It’s not my intent to know the facts. We have a biographer for that and it’s just not my area of interest. My role, particularly right here, is to record the human struggles and response.
I hadn’t actually put together the face of this guy, a township committeeman, with the story until that moment that he was the guy that our watermen complain about. I should know the local committeemen but I don’t. My first thought was if he is upset by something this minor like a newspaper article and a blog post, then we could have an explosion when the book comes out. As far as I know, the publisher goes into much greater detail on the Fortescue marina finances and mismanagement. But other than these casual comments, I really don’t know much about the topic. I only know what the guys talk about, and lately that’s mostly complaints.
The mayor chimed in too with complaints. That’s nothing new and he is more tactful. The mayor knows that reporters deliberately play us against each other for the purpose of getting their story. They get statements from me and a statement from him deliberately because they know that we have conflicting opinions. That’s been going on for two decades. Normally a third community member, Meghan, who is better respected than either of us guys, offers a balanced middle-of-the-road opinion to wrap up the story.
The committeeman probably doesn’t know that I’ve been sued close to a dozen times for millions of dollars over my unpopular opinions. He probably doesn’t know that I have judgements from those lawsuits far more than I’ll ever earn or be worth, and that none of that intimidates me from continuing to express an opinion. He might not even know that I’ve received death threats and was almost killed in a shocking plot to “take me out” by a local politician in his same position years ago. He did not know about the organizational structure of Money Island or the history of Baysave. Again, it’s not my job to get into that. I just know that my opinions are not popular with local government. It’s always been that way and nobody expects that to change. Nevertheless, my opinions will always be easy to read.
