Tag Archives: Seaport District

The seaport. Is anyone there?

Last week this column was about fish. This week there are other matters to consider about the seaport surrounding the Seaport District.

The first is the most heralded.

“The harbor cleanup really only finished in 2000,” said Julie Wormser, executive director of the Boston Harbor Association. “The harbor has had an incredible renaissance. It is exciting.”

Wormser cited the newish, large holding tank under Day Boulevard in South Boston, which allows storm-water runoff that the Deer Island sewage treatment plant can’t handle to be temporarily stored so sewage doesn’t back up in Boston’s basements. She points out that the naval base that closed in the 1970s is now home to many Charlestown residents and such institutions as Mass General and Spaulding Rehab. The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area has given us destinations within the harbor. Waterfront development and the Harbor Walk construction that has accompanied it has given Bostonians appealing restaurants and walking paths where we can all enjoy the harbor.

She is concerned but also hopeful that the mayor is leading a successful effort to address rising sea levels due to climate change and that saltwater won’t invade nearby roadway tunnels and subways. Her organization has had much influence in harbor improvements.

I was puzzled, however. Residential buildings are rising in the Seaport District to take in the harbor views. A museum and restaurants in new buildings line the harbor’s edge. The Harbor Walk is extended every time a new development comes on line.

But when I looked at the activity in the seaport itself, I saw little. It wasn’t just the lack of fishing boats, which I wrote about last week. It was winter, of course. In summer the water is filled with, private fishing charters, sail boats, water taxis, excursion boats.

But it is Boston’s seaport. Where are the ships that one would expect to see in a port? Where is the activity that the residents of those new, flashy flats will want to see?

No one would claim that Boston’s maritime activity rivals Long Beach’s or Newark’s.

Apparently, though, it isn’t as bad as it used to be or that I imagined. Cruise ship calls are increasing gradually, according to Matthew Brelis, director of media relations for Massport, which has been in charge of Boston’s ports since 1956. In 2015, 29 different ships made 114 calls at the Black Falcon terminal bringing in 328,305 passengers. During the 2016 season, officials expect to greet 33 different ships calling 119 times with about 330,000 passengers.

Cargo has grown a bit faster. Container shipping rose four percent in 2013 over 2012. It grew by 10 percent in 2014 and by 11 percent in        2015, according to Massport’s web site.

Automobiles and natural gas ships come into the harbor on a regular basis. Dredging should begin in 2017, Brelis hopes. Since the Army Corps of Engineers, not Massport, does the work, he can’t predict exactly. A deeper channel will allow post Panamax ships, the larger ships that will be accommodated this year in the expanded Panama Canal, to enter the harbor.

The seaport in 2012 generated $4.5 billion in revenues and supported 50,000 jobs, said Brelis. Seven thousand of those jobs are directly connected to seaport activities, and many of those are blue-collar with good wages.

The seaport also hosts commuters. Ferries from Hingham carry 5,000 people a day in winter and 1,000 commuters between Charlestown and Long Wharf, said Alison Nolan, principal and general manager of the 90-year-old Boston Harbor Cruises, her family’s business. Four heated and enclosed water taxis accommodate a few hundred people daily. Nolan expects to add more ferry routes between East Boston, the Seaport District and the Financial District as those neighborhoods’ density and development grow. One problem, says Nolan, is that the ferries do not necessarily connect with mass transit, so ferry commuters usually work close to the docks.

But winter is challenging for expanding ferry and water taxi service, she said. Sea conditions outside the inner harbor require more specialized vessels and that drives up costs.

Massachusetts exports a good deal of medical equipment and products, but remarkably, just like in the 17th century, we are still exporting hides and furs, said Brelis.

The Massachusetts economy is good right now. That means harbor activity is unlikely to slow and could continue its slow growth. One thing for sure: those who are moving to the Seaport District will have a front-row seat in observing what happens.

 

 

 

Big Pharma? Try Big Fish.

Last week the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center hosted Seafood Expo, a showcase of more than 1,200 fishing boat owners, seafood packagers and processors, fish farmers and suppliers to the fish industry. I went over to take a look.

I became interested in fish when I visited the Seaport District. Everyone knows about the new buildings and fast-moving construction sites in that location.

I knew less about the actual seaport. Some say Boston has the cleanest harbor in the world. We can swim in it and eat the fish we catch in it. So where are the fishing boats? At any time of day, I saw at most two boats tied up at the Boston Fish Pier.

I hoped the Seafood Expo would give me insight into the state of fishing in Boston. It did. The seafood industry is global. It involves airplanes and remote processors. New England struggles to keep up. The industry is so complicated there are many places where things can go wrong.

Expo exhibitors came from Norway, Iceland, Ecuador, Fiji, Vietnam, China, Chile, Indonesia, Turkey, Scotland, Japan and all over North America.

The vendors offered samples of their merchandise. Salmon dominated. Everything, though, was delicious. Several company representatives told me proudly of their success in providing “natural” seafood. One displayed a piece of tuna he said a competitor had infused with food coloring so it looked like the un-doctored “sushi-grade” tuna his company sold.

It was obvious from Expo that, unless chefs or supermarkets label their fish accurately, we have no idea where a piece of fish has come from. We also have no idea where it has been. Most of the fish I saw in the booths was frozen. In fact, most fish people buy, even if it is not in the freezer case, has been frozen.

This is not necessarily bad. Frozen fish handled properly can be nutritious and tasty. But the journey a piece of frozen fish has made could go like this: Unloaded from a boat at the Boston Fish Pier, a monkfish could be trucked to Logan Airport, put on a plane, flown to China, transferred to a processing plant where low-paid workers chop off its head and cut it into serving pieces, packed up again, hauled back to the airport, flown back to Logan, and trucked to a wholesaler, who sells it to a local restaurant or supermarket.

That’s the path of some fish labeled as “from New England waters.” The vendor who described this journey was proud of her company’s management of it, saying it was often cheaper to get fish ready for sale with two intercontinental plane rides than it was to keep the operation in Boston.

Some fish were labeled “organic.” Those were the farmed fish. Other popular words were “artisan,” “ultra-low temperature,” “sustainable,” “certifiable,” “traceable,” and “clean.”

These boasts were a reaction, I guess, to reports of dirty farming practices, false labeling of species and overfishing. Although many vendors claimed their products were traceable, one person told me the systems are rudimentary.

Boston still has a solid place in the industry, but now, as you see when you look around the fish pier, Seafood Way and Fid Kennedy Avenue, it is in processing and packaging rather than hauling in fish.

“Landings in most categories are down. Competition from imported fish is up,” said Bruce Berman of Save the Harbor, Save the Bay and a visiting scholar in public policy at Brown University’s Watson Institute.

He is pessimistic about the state of commercial fishing. “The general conclusion is that nothing is working,” he said.

A few fisheries are healthy. Boston still lands lobsters. Clams and monkfish are also plentiful. Striped bass has seen a successful resurgence, said Berman.

Matthew Brelis, director of media relations at Massport, is more upbeat than Berman about Boston and fish.

He pointed out that over the past decade the amount of seafood unloaded at the fish pier or the lobster terminal has grown. In 2004, 8.8 million pounds were unloaded. In 2014, the haul was 16.4 million pounds.

Meanwhile, a few companies are trying to change the way we who live next to the ocean get our fish. It is partly a return to old practices. But it depends on new technology.

Jared Auerbach, who started out fishing in Alaska and on the Cape, founded Red’s Best, which sells to wholesalers who want good, fresh, local fish. He also has a retail outlet at the Boston Public Market. His 20 refrigerated trucks meet local boats, mostly along the South Shore and the Cape. His staff sort the fish and track them with proprietary software from the dock through processing in the company’s facility at the fish pier and four other locations to the wholesalers who distribute to restaurants and retail outlets. They typically handle more than 100,000 pounds a day.

While there is no consistent supply of any one kind of fish, the hake, black sea bass, mackerel, skate, scup and other native species are all nutritious, tasty and fresh. Local cod is scarce so Auerbach suggests trying lesser-known varieties. “It’s screwy,” he said, “eating junk from other countries.”

Auerbach is proud that his company employs 80 local people, works with about 1,000 local fishing boats and has a smaller carbon footprint than companies depending on Logan Airport.

He rejects the global claims of “top of the catch” excellence. “Who buys the bottom of the catch?” he asks.

 

What do young Bostonians want?

There is a lot of action on the young person’s front. City fathers and mothers are trying to attract people age 20 to 34. Mayor Menino created an initiative called ONEin3 to engage that age group and help Boston serve their needs. He championed the Seaport District’s micro-apartments to house the young employees of the city’s start-ups and tech firms. Mayor Walsh is looking into extending bar and restaurant closing times in the “city that always sleeps,” a Boston Globe description from several years ago. The MBTA is testing late night service on selected T routes.

But I wanted to hear from young people, so I went to the source. Chloe Ryan, age 26, was the first person I spoke to. A Charlestown resident, Chloe is the manager of the ONEin3 program, so she gave me some background. Continue reading →