Saving Seafood

State and Local

MASSACHUSETTS: Wind Power Demand High, But So Are Costs

September 10, 2023 — Gov. Maura Healey last week announced a new effort to procure up to 3,600 megawatts of offshore wind power – the largest call out to developers in the state’s history.

Together with three electric companies, the state is seeking projects to produce what amounts to about 25 per cent of Massachusetts’ annual electricity demand. The new request for proposals will likely be welcomed by offshore wind energy developers that have stalled under pre-pandemic agreements to supply power to the state’s main utility companies.

Two companies with plans to place wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard have agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to get out of old contracts that they said made the projects economically unviable.

The procurement push from the state is for projects that already have a lease in the outer continental shelf area more than 10 miles south of the Island and signals a willingness to offer developers flexibility as the state strives for more renewable energy.

“With our top academic institutions, robust workforce training programs, innovative companies and support from every level of government – Massachusetts is all-in on offshore wind,” Ms. Healey said in a statement on August 30.

The day before the state’s announcement, SouthCoast Wind agreed to pay $60 million to get out of its contract with three utilities that it had promised to supply power to from the proposed farm 30 miles off the Island. Commonwealth Wind, another developer planning to build to the south of Martha’s Vineyard, agreed to pay $48 million earlier this year.

“Closing these contracts was never the plan but impacts of Covid-related supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine made them unfinanceable,” SouthCoast Wind spokesperson Martha Keeley said in a statement to the Gazette.

Read the full article at Vineyard Gazette

OREGON: Federal officials will meet with Oregonians about controversial offshore wind energy projects

September 10, 2023 — Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officials will meet with Oregonians concerned or curious about potential floating offshore wind energy projects following public and political outcry.

Officials will host three in-person meetings in Gold Beach, Coos Bay and Brookings on Sept. 26, 27 and 28. The agency also doubled the public comment period from 30 to 60 days, until Oct. 16.

Generating clean energy from wind turbines floating in the Pacific Ocean is part of state and federal plans to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change. But some residents of the Oregon Coast and several tribal nations are concerned about the potential impact to marine life, fisheries and the industries and people who depend on them.

Coos Bay and Brookings are closest to the two swaths of Pacific Ocean identified by the ocean energy agency as ideal for large wind turbines that would float about 18 to 32 miles from land. Energy generated across the 344 square miles of open ocean identified for the projects could power nearly 200,000 homes. The federal agency would like to host an auction by year’s end, allowing companies interested in developing ocean wind energy to bid on leases for the sites. A similar auction in California in 2022 brought in $757 million in winning bids for four companies.

Read the full article at Oregon Capital Chronicle 

RHODE ISLAND: CRMC Fisherman’s Advisory Board Resigns in Protest

September 10, 2023 — Rhode Island fishermen are sounding the alarm about offshore wind farms. Last week, the nine-member Fisherman’s Advisory Board to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) resigned in protest of the council’s offshore wind approval process.

Members of the now-defunct board claim the CRMC has abandoned the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan and sidelined the fishing industry in its race to meet renewable energy procurement goals with rapid and massive industrial-scale offshore wind development.

Lanney Dellinger, a crab and lobster fisherman out of Newport and the chairman of the Fisherman’s Advisory Board, provided an overview of the motivation behind the mass resignation to Newport This Week on Sept. 2, detailing a multitude of complaints from recreational and commercial fishing interests.

The complaints fell into two main categories: the board’s conclusion that the fishing communities and industries they represent have been sidelined and ignored despite their specified role in the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan to the point that there is no longer any point in participating in the process; and fears of what some fishermen are describing as nearly apocalyptic outcomes for New England’s fisheries if the Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind, Sunrise Wind and future offshore leases are constructed on Coxes Ledge (an offshore fishing ground about 20 miles south of Pt. Judith) and other special habitat areas off the Rhode Island coastline.

Read the full article at Newport This Week

VIRGINIA: Virginia looks to expand blue catfish fishery and processing

September 10, 2o23 — The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Customer Services (VDACS) – International Marketing Division sponsored a seafood promotional event bringing in international chefs, food critics and writers to visit a blue catfish processing plant on Aug. 30 in Hampton, Va.

The group toured the processing plant of L. D. Amory Company Inc. one of only three blue catfish processing plants in the state.  Meade Amory of Armory Seafood explained to the group that during the 1970s and ‘80s blue catfish were introduced to the James, Rappahannock and York river basins as a new recreational fish by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. Blue cats are native to Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers.

The catfish quickly spread throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed into nearly every major tributary and are now being seen in North Carolina waters too, says Amory.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Boston Seafood Festival takes over the historic Fish Pier this Sunday

September 10, 2023 — In a momentous celebration of Boston’s rich seafood heritage, the iconic Fish Pier in the Seaport will close to the public on Sunday, Sept. 10, to be used exclusively for the annual Boston Seafood Festival.

According to Chris Basile, president of the Boston Fisheries Foundation and founder/CEO of Seawitch Inc., the festival is a year-round labor of love. There will be food vendors, kid activities, an oyster shucking contest, fish cutting demonstrations and more.

“It’s to celebrate the seafood industry in Boston,” said Basile on Boston Public Radio. “As you know, Boston is the hub of the universe when it comes to seafood. More fish is shipped in and out of Boston than almost anywhere.”

One of the key players helping to keep Boston’s seafood industry alive — and located right on the pier — is Denarius Trading Co., founded by Paul Vincent Hagan III.

Read the full article at WGBH

ALASKA: Seagriculture USA 2023: Alaska maximizing mariculture opportunities

September 7, 2023 — Alaska is pushing for an increase in mariculture and kelp-farming sites across the state in an attempt to provide employment opportunities for Indigenous Alaskans.

At the second annual Seagriculture conference, a seaweed and mariculture conference taking place 6 and 7 September in Portland, Maine, U.S.A., Markos Scheer, the founder and CEO of Craig, Alaska-based mariculture firm Seagrove, touted the latest investments and innovation slated for Alaska’s mariculture sector.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

RHODE ISLAND: RI fishermen’s board resigns en masse over Biden admin-backed offshore wind farm: ‘Wholesale ocean destruction’

September 6, 2023 — A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.

The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.

The project falls under President Biden‘s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.

But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns

Read the full article at the New York Post

ALASKA: Alaska fishers fear another bleak season as crab populations dwindle in warming waters

September 6, 2023 — Gabriel Prout worked four seasons on his father’s crab boat, the Silver Spray, before joining his two brothers in 2020 to buy a half-interest plus access rights for a snow crab fishery that’s typically the largest and richest in the Bering Sea. Then in 2021, disaster: an annual survey found crabs crashing to an all-time low. The red king crab fishery was closed; the snow crab fishery cut to a tenth of the previous year’s take.

After another bad survey last year, the red king crab fishery closed again and the snow crab fishery closed for the first time ever. Suddenly, Prout’s optimism about being his family’s third generation in crab fishing seemed misplaced.

“It’s very hard to find a way to keep going forward,” said Prout, 33. With almost all his expected income gone, he’s scrambled ever since to scratch out a living by working as a salmon tender — using his boat to supply other boats and offload their catch.

Read the full article at WPRI

State of Alaska files motion against feds over control of fishery management

September 6, 2023 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy made it clear at a press conference on Friday just how crucial a motion filed by the State of Alaska is for the future of fisheries conservation in Alaska.

Dunleavy, along with Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, spoke to the press for about 15 minutes in Anchorage about the state’s motion to reject a lawsuit brought by the federal government over the state’s management of fisheries on the Kuskokwim River.

“What I want the people of Alaska to understand is we didn’t choose this fight, the feds forced it on us,” Dunleavy said. “The stakes obviously couldn’t be higher because this really has to do with management of our fisheries and potentially down the road game as well. [It] has to do with sovereignty over our waters.”

The state is arguing the federal government does not have the authority to manage the fishery on the Kuskokwim because the Kuskokwim River is not public land.

Read the full article at Web Center Fairbanks

MASSACHUSETTS: Blue Harvest shuts down fishing operations

September 6, 2023 — Blue Harvest Fisheries in New Bedford has closed down all its fishing operations.

The New Bedford Light is reporting the shutdown comes after the company spent the last five years selling off assets in an apparent effort to stay afloat.

But Blue Harvest, which was founded in 2015, also acquired assets during that period. In 2020, the company bought 12 vessels and 27 permits from the holdings of Carlos Rafael, the fishing mogul who was convicted of fraud and tax evasion.

Jared Auerbach, the CEO of the seafood distributor Red’s Best says Blue Harvest is huge — owning a quarter of the region’s groundfish fleet. Red’s Best was a customer of Blue Harvest.

Read the full article at CAI