Exclusive | Mahi mahi invade NYC as waters warm and tri-state fishermen are racing for the boats and catching their dinners

The frigid waters of the North Atlantic are becoming a tropical aquarium.New York residents may be fleeing to Florida in droves, but the Sunshine State’s aquatic inhabitants appear to be heading in the opposite direction.Warming waters off of the Big Apple coastline, traditionally synonymous with striped bass and fluke, have lately been attracting a “McElligot’s Pool”-worth of mahi-mahi, tarpon, and even monstrous sharks from down South.And amateur Tri-State anglers are scrambling onto boats — hoping to get these exotic fin-vaders to bite.Arthur Cortes, head of NYC’s Cortes Outfitters, who leads trips into the briny depths starting at just over $600 for a half-day voyage for up to three people, said he’s never seen anything like the shift, in his 30-plus years of fishing Gotham-adjacent waters.“When I started chartering, I never would’ve thought I would’ve been chasing [these species] inshore,” The Bronx bait slinger told the Post.On a trip led by Cortes just weeks ago, The Post encountered schools of mahi-mahi — a vibrant sport fish more closely associated with Baja California and the Florida Keys — just ten miles or so off of Jones Beach and within sight of the Manhattan skyline.This reporter only snagged the fun-sized version of this acrobatic, electric-green and gold gamefish more typically found on pricey restaurant plates in Manhattan than off its shores.

But Cortes said his clients have caught 15-20-pounders — while he recalled one angler who snagged a 60-pound bruiser while reeling in a fluke.“I’ve caught 20 mahi in one trip,” he boasted.The charter boater said the hatchet-headed predators started appearing in catchable numbers shortly before the pandemic.

“If I know they’re around, then I’ll start calling my list of clients,” he said.“They definitely want to go for them — just for the uniqueness and the cool factor.”Known as a pelagic, or an open ocean species, they’re rarely found this close to shore...