§ 91-b. Licensing of Long Island-Block Island Sound Pilots. 1. The commissioners, or a majority of them, shall license, for such terms as they may think proper, as many pilots as they may deem necessary to pilot ships transiting the New York state waters of Long Island Sound or Block Island Sound east of Execution Rocks or Sands Point including any such vessel entering or departing from any port situated in the New York state waters of Long Island Sound east of Execution Rocks and Sands Point and on the continuation of Long Island Sound to a line running from the foot of City Island Avenue on City Island southerly to Stepping Stones light, and such commissioners may specify in such licenses different degrees of qualifications appropriate to different parts or branches of pilot duty, according to the competency of the applicant.

2. Upon the taking effect of this chapter, all pilots who are then, and have been for the two years immediately prior thereto, actively engaged, as a regular occupation, in piloting seagoing vessels through the waters specified in this chapter shall, upon application, be licensed as full branch Long Island-Block Island Sound pilots for the waters covered by this chapter if found by the commissioners to be qualified in accordance with their regulations in effect on March seventeenth, nineteen hundred seventy-one, except that any person who is found to be so qualified who has reached his sixtieth birthday prior to the effective date of this act shall be eligible to renew his license until age seventy.