By Mike Busch 10-5-2021
If you have been to any south shore beaches west of Robert Moses lately, you may have noticed huge cargo ships and Oil Tankers anchored offshore.
One Munchen / Anchored off Jones Beach for 6 Days
Red Dots are Anchored Oil Tankers / Green Dots are Cargo Ships 9-30-21
These massive ships, arriving from all over the world, are waiting for clearance to unload their containers at either the Port Jersey Marine Terminal in Bayonne NJ, or the Port Newark/Elizabeth Terminal. Due to a variety of reasons including Covid-19, global supply chains are stretched to the extreme right now, with ships backed up and containers piling up in ports across the country and the world. Last week the photo editor I work with at the DailyMail.com asked me about flying my drone over the Ambrose Anchorage area where about 18 ships were waiting to enter the ports. There is a much bigger bottleneck at the L.A. and Long Beach Terminals in California and they were looking for similar footage. Since the ships anchored off Long Island tend to spread out over a 40-mile stretch I knew I couldn’t get what they were looking for so I went to plan B, a helicopter.
A friend recommended Heli Routes out of Republic Airport and DailyMail.com gave the go-ahead. This was a doors-off photo tour, giving me the freedom to wield two cameras without dealing with any glare. After going over safety protocols and strapping a life jacket around my waist we departed on Wednesday around noon. The plan was to fly south from Republic Airport over the Great South Bay and out over the ocean and the eastern end of the anchorage right off Robert Moses. Then we headed west and captured images of all the waiting ships, including a number of crude oil tankers. Then we turned north at Coney Island and proceeded over the Verrazzano Bridge toward the Jersey ports.
Here is the story from Dailymail.com that used my photos and video.
Cargo ships anchored off LA face 4-WEEK wait to berth and trains in Chicago are backed up 25 miles with global supply chain on the brink of collapse: Americans face shortages of cars, shoes and exercise gear as holiday season looms
The weather was absolutely perfect and the views over the Bay and Robert Moses were spectacular.
