A New York Times article published in 1911 referred to the Cholera Banks as “a famous ocean fishing ground located off the coast of New York and New Jersey that was discovered in 1853 by Captain Lime Beebe.” According to the Times, Capt. Beebe stumbled upon this rocky ledge aboard his Eliza Rodgers while on the hunt for black sea bass; because a major cholera epidemic was causing panic across New York at the time, he named it the Cholera Banks.
A quarter-century prior, Harpers Weekly featured an illustrated guide depicting a day of fishing the Cholera grounds by artist A.B. Frost in 1884. About a hundred years later it was written up as a Hot Spot in The Fisherman, though I’m not sure who authored that spotlight on this natural rocky bottom hot spot. Suffice to say, the Cholera Banks region has drawn boaters from ports along in the northern half of New Jersey and Long Island’s south shore for over a century.
Cholera is a hot spot again, this time due to new unnatural structure in the form of wind turbines. Located roughly 12 miles south of Point Lookout, NY and 19 miles east of Sandy Hook, the first phase of Empire Wind started construction in 2024, with the installation of the first of 54 foundations underway last spring. Empire Wind won’t begin to generate power until 2027, but today those turbine foundations rise up from the sea roughly 2 nautical miles southeast of the Three Sisters Wreck (40° 23.033’N / 73° 36.012’W) and extend out another 14 nautical miles with fishable structure below.
I’ve put a lot of research into industrial offshore wind, and I stand firm in my opinion that these fully operational turbine clusters will be bad for fish and fishermen in the future (peruse some of that data at TheFisherman.com). But today, yes, it’s good for aggregating fish, and recent reports of sea bass and pelagics, no doubt attracted to the fish-aggregating structure below, is hard to ignore. So, consider these the boon days when anglers can expect to find the structure rather advantageous.
Next up for Empire Wind, the laying of approximately 94 miles of export cables to handle high voltage transmission. As described by Empire Wind, “Installation began at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, moved out into New York Harbor, underneath the Verrazano Bridge, and then out to the offshore substation, located in the lease area. Additionally, over 100 miles of inter-array cables will be delivering power from the turbines to the offshore substation, where that power will be connected to the export cable. Cables are buried at depths that prevent interference with fisheries.”
That substation is where all those inter-array cables will come together to gather up power and push it along some 25 to 30 miles towards landfall Brooklyn. As noted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), in their words, “When a wind farm is located further than 30 miles from shore, additional equipment is required to effectively move this energy onshore without encountering significant losses of power during transmission.”
BOEM describes how a high voltage direct current system (HVDC) is used to convert alternating current (AC) generated from wind turbines to direct current for transporting longer distances. “The conversion process from AC to HVDC generates heat as a byproduct, and the systems require cooling to protect the equipment from damage and breakdown,” BOEM explains in their technical documentation. On average, BOEM indicates how 10 million gallons of sea water will be sucked in for intake cooling daily, and then treated with various chemicals before being discharged at temperatures as high as 90 degrees back into our oceans.
You know the old saying about dealing with lemons? Well, enjoy the lemonade now before this bitter fruit ripens and rots, all at the flick of a switch.
