NEW YORK — A group of swimmers in Brooklyn say they’re worried about boats and jet skis getting too close, so they’ve found a loophole to keep the water safe.
Within sight of the beach, Joe Koppelman jumped from a boat in head-to-toe diving gear and found a cinder block buried in the sand.
Once he was 18 feet below the surface, he secured a rope and installed a buoy with a sign: “Minimum Motocraft Distance 500 ft.”
“It’s a bit like riding a bike in Manhattan. You enjoy the activity, but you also worry about your safety,” says Koppelman, an open-water swimmer and diving enthusiast.
New York state law prohibits personal watercraft from coming within 500 feet of the beach, but for this group of open-water swimmers, the start of the season also means an increase in boats and jet skis getting too close.
“My friend was run over by four jet skis on August 29, 2015. And that’s when I started the campaign to make the waters safer for swimmers,” says Capri Djatiasmoro, who swims almost every day.
Djatiasmoro shared a video she took from that year that shows a jet skier getting close to swimmers and appearing to break the law. For years, she has asked various agencies to consider bringing back the buoy markers, which the city stopped installing on Coney Island in the 1990s.
“Two bills, two years in a row, have passed the General Assembly and are blocked in the Senate,” he said.
The Parks Department maintains the shoreline up to 500 feet in elevation.
“Buoys can be useful for indicating distance to shore; however, historically we have seen some swimmers view the buoys as targets to reach, leading them to swim to unsafe distances. Due to safety concerns, we did not use buoys in this area for this purpose since the 1990s,” a Parks spokesperson told CBS New York in a statement.
So this group of swimmers discovered a legal loophole by applying for lobster trap permits from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. But instead of setting real traps, they placed signs 500 feet from shore — big enough for watercraft and swimmers to see, but small enough not to draw too much attention from the beach.
Everything about it is a grassroots effort, from making the signs to the annual installation from a friend’s boat. They estimate their efforts cost hundreds of dollars between materials and labor.
Abby Jordan, an environmentalist and diving enthusiast, says feeling safe while swimming leads to an appreciation for our waterways.
“What Joe and Capri have been able to do over the years is create a system of swimming safety that is visual, and that then leads to stories like this that help people know that you can swim in the waters of New York City. They are clearly, they are clean, she said.
Beyond the 500-foot limit, the water is monitored by the Coast Guard and the NYPD Harbor Unit, both of which encourage people who see dangerous behavior to call 911. But when it comes to their own safety, this group takes no chances. .
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