Boat NY educational series hosts Dave White, left, and Drew Wickham are familiar faces to NY boating audiences. Credit: Courtesy of BIA

Contact:

Dave White, NYSG Coastal Recreation and Tourism Specialist, E: dgw9@cornell.edu, P: 315-312-3042

New York Sea Grant partners with NY’s boating industry to deliver award-winning boating education messaging in diverse, user-friendly formats.

Oswego, NY, August 10, 2022 - Since its inception in 2008, the award-winning New York Sea Grant (NYSG) “Discover Clean & Safe Boating” program has adapted to reach new audiences and to make use of new technologies to deliver critical information about how to be environmentally-friendly, safe, and legal on New York’s many boating waters.

Most recently, the “Discover Better Boating” monthly info-news segment developed and aired for 10 seasons by NYSG in partnership with the Boating Industries Association (BIA) of Upstate New York and Spectrum News (formerly YNN and TWC) was recast as the “Boat NY” online monthly boating education series.

As COVID-19 continued to impact the upstate NY area and boaters in 2021, NYSG and BIA looked at new ways to engage boating audiences and to provide up-to-date information to help them navigate ever-changing rules and protocols. The Boat NY series that launched in April 2021 has done that and has also helped to keep the marine trade industry connected to the public.

Boat NY hosts: Drew Wickham, manager of the BIA-sponsored Central New York (CNY) Boat Shows, and Dave White, a coastal recreation and tourism specialist with New York Sea Grant, Oswego, N.Y., are well known to boating public as the “faces” of the “Safety Dave” series of boating safety vignettes developed for the CNY Winter Boat Show.

Boat NY is designed for social media placement of its short informational segments on New York’s diverse boating resources, safety tips for different boating styles, and boating opportunities statewide. The less-than-2-minute segments post the first week of the month and are freely accessible via Facebook and from BIA members.

Project Partner:

• Boating Industries Association of Upstate New York

“The BIA is excited to partner with New York Sea Grant to launch this Boat NY video series as a fun way to keep our boating public informed and to attract new boaters to New York State’s fabulous water resources while providing boating safety tips for all.” — Jay Lorenz, BIA Immediate Past President (2021), General Manager, Smith Boys boat dealership, Brewerton, NY


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.