Saving Seafood

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MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen months on, Vineyard Wind blade break investigation isn’t done

December 4, 2025 — Sixty-two towers. Sixty-two nacelles. One-hundred eighty-six blades.

Those are the pieces that comprise Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore wind project nearing completion after more than two years of construction.

By The Light’s accounting, the project has two towers and two nacelles left to ship out from the Port of New Bedford. That leaves the blades — an estimated 33 of which, as of last month, have yet to top some turbines, and an unknown number that may still need to be removed and replaced.

As batches of blades have traveled across the seas, to and from New Bedford, France, and Nova Scotia, and been installed on turbines, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has continued to investigate what caused one of the blades to fail in July 2024.

In January 2025, the Biden administration ordered Vineyard Wind to remove all blades manufactured at a factory in Gaspé, Quebec, where the broken blade was built. BSEE gave Vineyard Wind permission to finish construction using blades from a different factory in Cherbourg, France.

Read the full article at the The New Bedford Light

Sea lions keep gorging on endangered salmon despite 2018 law

December 4, 2025 — Efforts to stop Pacific sea lions from feasting on endangered salmon and steelhead have largely failed despite millions of taxpayer dollars spent on those efforts, lawmakers were told Wednesday.

In a hearing on the efficacy of the Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act adopted in 2018, witnesses told members of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries that wildlife managers have been unable to check a sustained population boom of the salmon-devouring pinnipeds — marine mammals with both front and rear flippers — that began in the 1990s.

“These animals are remarkably resilient, and they do know where their food source is,” Sam Rauch, deputy assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries, told the subcommittee. “It is very difficult to encourage them to leave with anything less than force,” which usually means trap and kill.

Read the full article at E&E News

Trump administration moves to revoke key permit from another offshore wind project proposed near Mass.

December 4, 2025 — More than a year after the Biden administration issued the final permit for a pair of proposed offshore wind projects near Massachusetts, the Trump administration is trying to take it back.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to “remand,” or reconsider, its approval of the construction and operations plan for the projects, New England Wind 1 and 2. The plan is the last major permit an offshore wind project needs to begin construction.

The motion is the latest move by the Trump administration to target the offshore wind industry in the U.S., and it comes just a few weeks after a federal judge in a different, but similar, case ruled that the government could take a second look at the construction and operations plan it approved for SouthCoast Wind, a proposed wind project also near Massachusetts.

The federal government’s motion to reconsider New England Wind’s permit says its prior approval “may have” failed to account for all of the project’s impacts. The filing cited a relatively new interpretation of the federal law known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that changes the criteria to evaluate offshore wind projects.

“Agencies have inherent authority to reconsider past decisions and to revise or replace them,” the government’s lawyers wrote.

But Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, said this is not how the permitting process is supposed to work.

Read the full article at wbur

Broad coalition promotes Senate aquaculture bill

December 4, 2025 — The seafood industry, environmentalists and researchers are aligned in pressing Congress to speed the permitting and development of open-ocean aquaculture trials.

In a Tuesday letter to leaders of both the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee, supporters of S. 5286, the “Marine Aquaculture Research for America Act,” said agencies should permit pilot projects that “generate the robust, real-world data” necessary to evaluate aquaculture activities in federal oceans without harming water quality or marine ecosystems.

“The MARA Act will equip federal and state agencies with the evidence needed to establish high environmental standards and ensure that any growth of U.S. aquaculture proceeds responsibly and sustainably,” states the letter with 140 signatures.

Read the full article at E&E News

Chesapeake Bay region leaders approve revised agreement, commit to cleanup through 2040

December 4, 2025 — State and federal leaders from around the Chesapeake Bay have given the final stamp of approval to an agreement that sets the tone for the next 15 years of cleaning up the nation’s largest estuary.

The Chesapeake Executive Council, which directs the massive restoration effort, met in Baltimore Tuesday to celebrate the latest iteration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

“It is not just a renewal of commitment, but it is a redoubling of our efforts to make progress that is not only aspirational, but progress that is fast,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said at the meeting, his last as a member of the council. “The huge effort that we have made over many years is the foundation.”

Virginia and other states in the region signed onto the most recent agreement in 2014. It set benchmarks for participants to voluntarily achieve by 2025, such as cutting pollution and boosting seagrass and crab populations. Officials failed to meet about a third of the targets by this year’s deadline.

Read the full article at VPM

ALASKA: Contamination safeguards of transboundary mining questioned

December 4, 2025 — Reports of mine tailings dams leaching toxicants into salmon-rich transboundary waterways flowing into Southeast Alaska are raising concerns of fishermen, tribes, First Nations, and communities on both sides of the Alaska-British Columbia border.

According to Salmon Beyond Borders and the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) the administration of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has put the risk of transboundary mining contamination of shared rivers at greater risk a decade after the Alaska and government of British Columbia signed a Memorandum of Understanding about Canadian mining on these transboundary rivers flowing into Alaska.

“For eight years the Dunleavy administration has allowed ongoing and new pollution from B.C. transboundary mines to go unaddressed and for B.C. to skirt accountability for commitments outlined in state-provincial agreements,” said Breanna Walker, director of Salmon Beyond Borders, in a statement issued on Nov. 25.

“Alaska’s fisheries are increasingly at risk from British Columbia’s transboundary mines,” said Linda Behnken, executive director of ALFA. “We rely on both state and federal governments to negotiate meaningful protection for Alaska waterways and fisheries.  In the absence of meaningful action our fish, fisheries and fishing communities are vulnerable.”

State of Alaska officials say they are in fact very engaged with British Columbia through the Transboundary Bilateral Working Group. Sam Dapcevich, special assistant to the DEC commissioner, said in an email on Nov. 26 that “Alaska also continues to advocate for cleanup of the Tulsequah Chief mine.  DEC is fully engaged and working with our B.C. counterparts on activity awareness and status of projects,” he said.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Federal government decides it won’t list American eel as species at risk

December 4, 2025 — The federal government has decided against listing the American eel under the Species at Risk Act, a move that comes after more than a decade of indecision and years of chaos and controversy in the lucrative Maritime fishery for juvenile eels, also known as elvers.

The decision is being both welcomed and criticized, with the commercial elver sector noting that listing the eel as a species at risk would have shut down the industry, while other observers have urged for it to be protected for conservation reasons.

American eel was first assessed as a species of “special concern” in 2006 by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife. In 2012, the advisory group designated it as threatened, but for 13 years the federal government would not decide whether to formally list it as a species at risk.

In a news release issued Tuesday, the federal government said it came to its decision after considering “the best available scientific and socioeconomic data,” and comments from Indigenous groups, provinces, stakeholders and the Canadian public.

Read the full article at CBC

US Congress holds hearing on sea lion removals and salmon predation

December 4, 2025 — The U.S. House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee held a hearing on sea lion predation on salmon and the effectiveness of killing the mammals to slow down the trend.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), sea lions skyrocketed from a population of roughly 10,000 in the 1950s to 250,000 today. That spike has been seen as a success story for the MMPA, but it’s also had a major impact on salmon populations, which are a key food source for pinnipeds. By traveling upriver to avoid their natural predators – orcas – sea lions are able to feast on already struggling salmon populations. Since 2002, California and Steller sea lions have eaten roughly 98,000 salmon at just two sites: Bonneville Dam and Willamette Falls, Oregon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

USD 12 million awarded for restoring fish habitats, growing oysters in Long Island Sound

Decemeber 4, 2025 — The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has awarded USD 12 million (EUR 10.3 million) in grants to support the health of the Long Island Sound, with much of the funding supporting improvements to fish habitats, marine debris removal, and oyster recovery.

The grants will also leverage USD 8 million (EUR 6.9 million) in matching contributions from recipients of the funding, bringing the total investment to USD 20 million (EUR 17.2 million). The grants were awarded through the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, a project launched in 2005 in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to improve the health of the sound and conserve habitat.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

North Atlantic Right Whale Calving Season 2026

December 4, 2025 — The right whale calving season begins in mid-November and runs through mid-April. Researchers have identified one calf so far this calving season.

Every single female North Atlantic right whale and calf are vital to this endangered species’ recovery. Since 2017, the whales have been experiencing an Unusual Mortality Event, which has resulted in more than 20 percent of the population being sick, injured, or killed. The primary causes of the Unusual Mortality Event are entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with boats and ships. In the last decade, there have been more North Atlantic right whale deaths than births.

Reproductive females are producing fewer calves each year, which impacts the ability of the species to recover. Female right whales become sexually mature at about age 10. They give birth to a single calf after a pregnancy lasting over a year. Three to four years is considered a normal or healthy interval between right whale births. But now, on average, they are having calves every 7 to 10 years. Biologists believe the additional stress from entanglements, vessel strike injuries, and changes in prey availability due to climate change all likely contribute to right whales calving less often.

With the current number of females and the necessary resting time between births, 20 newborns in a calving season would be considered a relatively productive year. However, given the estimated rate of human-caused mortality and serious injury, we need approximately 50 or more calves per year for many years to stop the decline and allow for recovery. The only solution is to significantly reduce human-caused mortality and injuries, as well as stressors on reproduction.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries