DERELICT DEBRIS: Boats left behind in the Barnegat Bay waste emergency response resources, become eyesores on the otherwise pristine waterway and pose environmental risks to the habitat. (Photo Courtesy Sea Tow)

Under new federal funding aimed at removing abandoned and derelict vessels from the nation’s waterways, the state of Maine will have five such vessels removed as part of a $758,500 grant. There are at least a half dozen in the Barnegat Bay alone, but New Jersey has no way to remove the dangers those boats pose.

“We have to do what Florida did,” said Walt Bohn of Sea Tow Central New Jersey, which operates out of Key Harbor in Waretown. “They took the bull by the horns and identified the problem, a little late.”

Florida officials have implemented a grant process up to $25 million to recover abandoned boats, he said, citing the Keys and Miami as some of the problematic areas.

“That’s what prompted the state to come up with this funding to start removing these boats,” he said. “Right now, New Jersey has nothing.”

And the problem has been growing since 2020, Bohn said.

“(We are) starting to see an influx of abandoned and derelict boats,” he said. “Once in a while there was one and then there was two; then there was three. Now, I think, in our area alone, from the (Route 37) bridge (in Toms River) to Harvey Cedars, there are at least six that are known.”

In addition to the boats being left behind, the issue has escalated to the point of who is going to fund their removals, Bohn said.

“Typical thing, where everyone is pointing at each other and saying this is (someone else’s) problem, and the reality is it’s a state problem,” he said, adding it’s not a political football. “It’s a bipartisan issue, not a Republic issue, not a Democrat issue, not an Independent issue. It’s a state problem that needs to be identified and then a solution (found).”

In the meantime, Bohn said the boats remaining in place present multiple hazards, including from an emergency response perspective.

“Right now, we have a boat over in Laurel Harbor. It’s up against the marsh. It blew over from Seaside the week before the Fourth of July,” he said, adding, “Since then, because boaters are going to try to be helpful, they want to call out and say, ‘Hey, there’s a boat over here. It’s on its side.’”

Those call-outs, Bohn said, involved 911, the U.S. Coast Guard and the New Jersey State Police Marine Unit.

“Everyone has to go out and investigate until they determine that it is one and the same boat. It puts the onus, the burden on the 911 system, the responders,” he said, adding, “The second part is they do become a hazard.”

About a month ago, a boater believed he had run aground by the governor’s mansion at Island Beach State Park, he said.

“Ends up there is a submerged vessel over there. It’s probably been over there for a while, but it’s gotten to the point where it is below the water surface, and the boater was driving along with his family,” Bohn said, adding the boater’s craft was totaled.

Abandoned and derelict vessels also pose an environmental risk, he said.

“You have fuel; you have oil. There could be human waste on it because they have holding tanks,” Bohn said.

A boat with a generator has been abandoned in Laural Harbor for a while, he said, meaning someone was likely calling it home for a while, he explained.

“So, where is everything going now? In our beautiful waterways,” Bohn said. “It’s starting to look like a graveyard of boats as you go around.”

Three years ago, a boat ended up over by Oyster Creek and is now wrecked right off the creek, but it is not a navigable channel, he said.

“Everyone is pointing their fingers at whose responsibility it is (to move it),” Bohn said, adding there is a lot of speculation who, when and why the boats are being left behind. “The abandoned boats situation is not just on the water. It’s also on land.”

If you go to Barnegat or other areas in the Pinelands, people are dumping boats after grinding off the vessels’ identification number and then just dropping them off, he said.

“Now, how do you identify whose boat it is?” Bohn asked. “That’s problem number one.”

The second part to that is what is happening in the marinas with boats that no one comes back for, he added.

“Owners run into financial crisis; we’ve had some over the years since COVID; inflation. People can’t afford their boats. So, what do they do? They leave it, and then the marinas get stuck with them,” Bohn said.

Some marinas will attempt to sell the boat with no title or give the boat away for free, letting the new owner take ownership of it. Now the boat becomes their problem and not the marina’s problem, he added.

“Then, people come along, take their boat, go out and live on it a while, then run into a problem. Whether it’s winter time comes or it starts to leak or they’re just sick of living on a boat, they just leave it anchored up,” Bohn said.

The problem is twofold because those “new owners” aren’t the owner of record just because they paid for it, so there’s no way to track down the appropriate people because no title was exchanged.

“That’s kind of what is going on here with the one in Laurel Harbor,” he said, adding the last owner of record dates back a decade to someone in Connecticut, and finding out what happened after is a process. “It takes time and money. You have to advertise in the newspaper three times.”

The answer to all of these issues has been to just leave well enough alone, Bohn said.

“That creates a cycle of abandoned boats. State police do what they can. You can only cite a person so much if you know who the owner was at the time of abandonment, but you can’t get blood from a stone,” he said, adding the boat owner doesn’t have any money, which is why they ended up abandoning the vessel. “They’re not going to put someone in jail because they abandoned a boat.”

Had action been taken a month ago after the one boat blew over into Laurel Harbor from Seaside, the recovery would have been easy and reasonable, about $5,000 to $6,000, Bohn said.

Same with the boat abandoned right off Oyster Creek. Instead, the mast has broken off; it’s underwater, but part of the hull is still exposed.

“Now, you’re talking a recovery cost of about eight to 10 times more than the one in Laurel Harbor,” he said, noting a crane barge may have to be brought to recover the boat because there’s so much mud and sand and everything else. “Both of these boats are out of the waterway, out of a channel and not a hazard to the channel.”

The real problem, Bohn said, is the state of New Jersey.

“Someone has to take care of this and keep an eye on it and identify the problem. That’s where I come in,” he said. “I’m trying to make people aware of it so we can get a resolution before we become a boat graveyard in the Barnegat Bay.”

Another vessel, at Conklin Island, has been sitting there for years in the vicinity of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, which asked Bohn to take a look and see how much it would cost to recover it.

“At this point, it is filled with sand, and the fiberglass is like paper now. So, you have to get a crane barge in, put a Dumpster on it and just cut it up and then take the motor out,” he said. “If it was something that was addressed when it initially happened, the cost … it’s going to cost us a lot more money if we don’t start doing something now.”

Another piece of the puzzle is that boat owners are not required to carry insurance on their vessels the same way car owners in New Jersey are, which means there is no recourse from that level, either.

“If it (insurance) were (required), people would take care of it because an insurance company would not want that responsibility,” he said, adding trying to make boat insurance mandatory like car insurance would be difficult and unpopular.

Increasing boat registration fees from $1 to $5 to specifically fund the recovery of abandoned and derelict boats, which could be part of a solution, would also likely be unpopular, Bohn said.

“There has to be something. I am just the guy who is going to identify the problem. There’s people that can help solve the problem, and I can certainly give suggestions,” he said, adding that the reality is some things will never be popular, but that doesn’t mean they should not be undertaken. “You’ve got to make things better.”

When asked if there was a solution that would be popular, Bohn said that would be state funding of the endeavor, like Florida is doing, to keep local waterways safe for everyone.

“The money comes from somewhere, but if you don’t say, ‘I am raising your registration (fees) ..,” he said.

— Gina G. Scala

ggscala@thesandpaper.net