The Community Outlook

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In my last column I wrote about Vic Fuginas, who, as a kid, worked for my father’s and uncle’s Bright Eye Fish Co. On the morning of the 7th of May, 2009, at or around ten of the clock, Vic cast off. Two things about Vic stand out in my boyhood memory. Vic liked to do cannonball jumps off Sam Bower’s high dock. All the boys swam at Sam’s. Marion Davis, who also played TAPS at the July Fourth Service, swam there too. The other thing was that Vic loved SPEED. The kind involving motion. He was a daredevil behind the wheel. I recall either Vic or Andy Chisolm taking the corner of Cedarhurst Ave. and Bayside Drive on two wheels. Vic and Buddy Eberhardt raced stockcars at the Freeport Track. Or maybe it was Demolition Derby. He spoke no ill of any man. If Vic was your friend, it was for life. We wish him a good voyage. The highlight of those bygone days was the diving helmet, engineered and constructed by Mike and Vinnie Merola and Frank, “Blackie”, MacDonald during the summer of ’38 and ’39. Built from an old galvanized hot water tank, swiped from the plumbing shop, no doubt, it was state of the art, simple, yet, well built. It had padded cutouts for around the shoulders, a glass porthole, a compass and a red rubber ball to be released as a signal to haul the diver up. Air was supplied by a bicycle tire pump with a rubber hose attached to the helmet. The pump man was a position of honor. All of us little kids vied for the privilege of manning the pump. We all made numerous submariner dives. It was very exciting, walking around on the bay bottom. Along with grand adventure, came fame if not fortune. Mike and Frank were the subject of a feature article in the Nassau Daily Review Star. Bold headlines proclaimed

Boys Explore Floor of Bay in Homemade Diving Helmet Frank is quoted in the article as saying: “We got talking with an old diver, and he told us some interesting stories about divers.

The Community Outlook

So we just up and built a diving helmet.” As stated in the Review-Star…“Frank spotted a galvanized iron boiler in his father’s plumbing shop and with the help of a hack saw and a few tools, built the helmet.” Our friend, Roy of the McGuckin clan, received recognition as boat handler. One of the summer kids in town was Ed Wardle. Ed was always working at Burton’s, his grandfather’s row boat station. Ed lived winters in Brooklyn and helped out summers from a very young age. Bill and Mary Burton moved their row boat station from Gerritsen Creek, Brooklyn to Point Lookout in or around 1930. There were no bulkheads or docks then, in fact, Bill had to dig through a couple of hundred feet of sand dunes to get access to the property. He built a small house with no heat or insulation, so of course they had to go south in winter. The McIntyre’s place now sits on the site. There were no rental skiffs or motors then, only oar power. Boats rented for about a buck and a half a day. Bill would tow a raft of boats out to the choice spots in morning and go back for them in the afternoon. In spring there were plenty of flounder. Scow Creek and the mud flats in Middle Bay were good spots. The winter flounder season started on Washington’s Birthday and the fluke season sometime in June. Winter flounder, also called black back flounder and summer flounder, also called fluke, bury themselves with sand and only the eyes show. They are ambush predators. Winter flounder is so named from its tendency of moving into the bays in winter and off shore in summer when water temperature warms up. Like all flat fish, the winter flounder has both eyes on the same side of the head. A newly hatched flat fish larva has one eye on each side but within a few months one eye migrates to the other side. Both eyes on one side of its head enable the flat fish to rest on the bay or ocean bottom while directing both eyes upward in search of prey. Flounder are caught on worms, supplied by worm diggers on the Maine coast. Worms are harvested during a brief three hour period when the tide, which has a range of thirty feet up there, is suitably low. The worm diggers take a specially built hoe and dig as fast as they can. There have been proposals for installing aquanators, the underwater equivalent of wind turbines, to take advantage of the reliable flow of vast quantities of swiftly moving water. continued on page 8

July - August 2009

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Bayside continued from page 4

Fluke are caught on live killies, supplied by men like the famous “Killie Willie” from Freeport. In fall, fluke migrate offshore to the continental shelf where spawning takes place. Larvae are transported inshore by prevailing currents and development takes place in bays and estuaries. Females attain weight up to twenty-six pounds. Fluke have a large mouth, are aggressive and will chase their prey to the surface. Fishermen are not the only predators of flounders. High on the list are habitat degradation caused by dredging and filling, runoff from fertilizer, pesticides and other types of pollution. Natural predators include striped bass. Bass can suck a flounder or other victim into its mouth from over a foot away. Their jaws can crush a lobster or clam in a second. Striped bass, also called rockfish, are anadromous fish that migrate between salt and fresh water where spawning takes place. In 2007 President Bush designated striped bass a protected game fish, prohibiting the sale of striped bass caught in Federal waters outside of the state three mile limit. Striped bass can attain a weight of over seventy five pounds. There were no cormorants around when I was a kid, now there is one of these invasive birds on almost every pole. They are an aquatic diving and under-water swimming bird. Their feathers are not water-resistant so they have to spend long hours in the sun with their wings spread to dry out. Fish-eating cormorants have staged a dramatic recovery since the 1950s, when they were nearly wiped out by pesticides and shooting. These long-necked diving birds have been protected for years under the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty. Cormorants are the cause of much controversy because of the amount of fish they eat, their own weight per week. Also, their droppings are acidic and cause massive environmental damage, even erosion.

The Community Outlook The recovering eagle population is feeding on cormorant eggs and chicks. Cormorants have been found at depths of almost one hundred fifty feet. They have a wing span of four feet and can swallow a large fish, head first. Another huge predator is that cute little harbor seal. There are thousands on Long Island and they each eat over thirty pounds of fish every day, mostly juvenile flounders. Of course man does his share too. The most famous flounder spot on the East Coast was Quincy, Massachusetts, once known as the FLOUNDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. I knew a guy who went to Hurley’s Boat Rental on Quincy Bay every year. People came from all up and down the coast for the plentitude of flounders. He said that they, and others, would catch a boatload and get them filleted at the dock for ten cents a fish to be taken home by the cooler full. Finally, he went back one year, and most of the flounders were gone “Draggers snuck in at night and got them”, he said. Blame the commercial guy. When Bill and Mary retired, daughter Edna and husband, Ed Sr., operated the station as Ed’s. Many people remember Edna. In the glory days of the row boat business, there was competition for trade. Edna would stand out on the sidewalk and try to hawk fishermen away from other boat liveries. In her later life she was known for waving strangers in off the street. Later, my friend, young Ed, took over. He was a tin knocker during the winter and

July - August 2009

ran the station in summer. His wife, Marylyn, worked at the station from five thirty A.M. till five-thirty P.M. Her father always told her to go to business school so as not to work on her feet. Who wouldn’t leave a prestigious executive secretary’s job at 100 Park Ave for a fishing station? Some time during the late 60’s Ed bought out another station down the street, Dom’s Fishing Station. By then, there were no more rowboats; everybody used skiffs and outboard motors. When a customer returned with a mess of small flounder Ed would ask “Kind of small, aren’t they?” The standard answer “They’re small but fat.” Eventually health problems forced Ed to give up the station. In a lucky happenstance, Ted and Sue Wondsel became the new owners and with the stroke of a brush, Ed’s skiffs became Ted’s. Ed and Marylyn’s grandson, Keith, is one of the crew at Ted’s. Younger brother, Kevin, will come on board once his working papers come through. TRADITION DIES HARD. On January 23rd, 2007 Ed Wardle cast off. R.I.P. — Bob Doxsee