Port of New Bedford

The port is part of Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ #28), which also includes New Bedford Regional Airport.

The harbor has ongoing environmental remediation through dredging and capping, largely focusing on removal of PCBs released into it during between the 1940s and 1970s.

Between the two islands lies the central section of the bridge with a swing span that allows maritime passage to the upper harbor.

Just south of Palmer's Island, beginning near Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven, is the harbor's hurricane barrier, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s.

The harbor section has two 440-ton gates in the center that can be closed to protect the port during strong tides or storm surges.

More than half of the United States' whaling fleet of over 700 vessels was registered at the Port of New Bedford, which played a prominent role in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

South Terminal has over 25 acres (10 ha) of marine industrial land, with a 1,600 linear foot (490 m) bulkhead and depths of 20 feet (6.1 m), for offloading fish and seafood directly into the on-site processing plants where they are filleted, cleaned, and weighed, for shipment by truck and air freight.

The New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal is an offshore wind port under development by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (Mass CEC).