Safe boating, including invasives education, continues through the season

Syracuse, NY, May 28, 2011 - Memorial Day weekend is when many people put their boats back out in the water. And every year there's new challenges for keeping people safe and the water clean and healthy. As seen in this clip from Syracuse, NY-based Your News Now, New York Sea Grant is hoping a life size display will do this.

The 2011 Discover Clean and Safe Boating campaign, which features different types of vessels each year, will be at many waterfront events throughout the summer. This year, two Central New York-manufactured vessels made the list - a 16-foot fishing boat (with an engine provided by Clayton Marina) and 12’9 canoe.

"The nice thing about the two vessels we have is that they provide us with a really standard display that folks can come up to and see all of the product that's required and recommended for safe and clean boating," says NYSG Coastal Recreation & Tourism Specialist Dave White.

Also, with paddle sports being one of the largest growing segments of boating use in New York State and across the United States, it's become a new focus."Paddle sports are being added into the campaign this year because it's unique - it's something that folks don't think about when it comes to issues like safety, clean boating and inavasive species," says White, who discussed all the safety featured now required of paddle boaters.

As for the issue of transporting invasive species, White says, "You want to make sure that you're inspecting everything that was in the water, draining any water so that it doesn't go from one waterbody to the next, and, if you have time, rinse everything off and let it dry out so that even the small critters aren't going to be transported."

"A lot of folks are really good at making sure that they're not transporting them with their boat or trailer. Something we all need to be congnicent of and thinking about are all the other things that we do on our boat that could possibly transport - whether it be a weed that gets caught in your fishing net or bait bucket or something else that gets snagged on your fishing pole."

The YNN channel, based in Syracuse, telecasts two separate program feeds, one to Central/Northern New York; one to the Southern Tier. YNN is available to nearly 600,000 cable subscribers across a 25-county, 15,000 square mile area.