Saving Seafood

Trump Administration Targets Fourth Offshore Wind Project for Remand

October 22, 2026 — In what is clearly emerging as a new tactic to derail the offshore wind energy sector, the Department of Justice filed for the fourth time in just a matter of days, asking a District Court to remand the prior approval of the Construction and Operations Plan of a proposed offshore wind farm. The latest target is New England Wind and is drawing angry criticism from environmentalists and elected officials.

The Department of Justice filed a memorandum in support of the long-running case between an environmental group, Ack For Whales, which has been suing the Department of Commerce and Avangrid, the developer of a project known as New England Wind. In the now common tactic, DOJ asks the District Court for the District of Columbia to remand the approval of the Construction and Operations Plan back to the Department of the Interior so that it can reconsider the approval under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

It writes in the memorandum that the approval, which was announced on July 1, 2024, “did not properly consider or explain how the COP ‘provides for’ the subsection’s identified factors.” It is the fourth time DOJ has used a similar tactic to target the permits for wind farms. It took the same approach to challenge the largely completed Revolution Wind project, which should complete commissioning by the end of this year, and then to challenge a series of projects that had gained approvals under the Biden administration but have not commenced construction.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive 

Trump admin reignites battle over salmon, dams in Columbia River

October 21, 2026 — The federal government sparred with conservationists before a Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday in an effort to overturn an injunction in a long-running case concerning salmon recovery in the Columbia Basin in the Pacific Northwest.

“After a quarter century of judicial intervention, it’s time to return control of the Columbia River system to the federal agencies that Congress entrusted with that extremely complex task,” said Jacob Ecker, Justice Department attorney, referring to the operation of the 14 federal dams on the river.

The lawsuit over fish conditions began in 2001 and had reached an agreement until the Trump administration in June 2025 abruptly withdrew from the Biden-era 2023 Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, which promised to spend $1 billion to protect endangered steelhead and salmon.

The agreement was the result of a deal struck with Oregon, Washington, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the National Wildlife Federation, after they had proposed the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.

Under the agreement, the government committed to immediate measures to protect salmon, along with a decadelong plan to manage hydropower operations while meeting rising energy needs.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

MARYLAND: US Wind pulls out of wind turbine manufacturing at Sparrows Point

October 8, 2026 — US Wind, the company behind a proposed offshore wind development off the coast of Ocean City, no longer plans to develop components for wind turbines at Baltimore County’s Sparrows Point — at least not for now.

The Baltimore-based company turned over its lease at the Tradepoint Atlantic site in Sparrows Point to Anduril Industries, the shipbuilding company whose arrival was heralded on Tuesday by a visit from President Donald Trump (R).

It comes as US Wind’s only offshore wind project, planned for Ocean City’s coastline, continues to face legal headwinds and roadblocks from the Trump administration.

At the tail end of President Joe Biden’s (D) administration, the US Wind project received its last federal permit, but the town of Ocean City challenged it shortly thereafter. And after Trump’s inauguration, the federal government that once defended the permit permit for the project signaled its intent to revoke it, spurring a new round of legal wrangling.

In a statement issued Tuesday, US Wind CEO Jeff Grybowski said his company “jumped at the opportunity” to bring “near-term” jobs to the Sparrows Point site as US Wind faces delays. The site will be taken over by Anduril, which plans to invest $3.7 billion at the former home of Bethlehem Steel to construct a new shipbuilding facility, Arsenal-2, that is expected to bring an estimated 3,100 permanent new jobs to Maryland.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

Offshore wind job training built for a boom is facing down a bust

September 22, 2026 — This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. ​

A former Navy sailor and union laborer from Local 1298 on Long Island, William “Billy” Bishop jumped at the chance to work on the water again when he learned two years ago about job opportunities on offshore wind construction projects.

After earning a safety certification from the National Offshore Wind Training Center — a collaboration between Long Island’s Suffolk County Community College, the Long Island Federation of Labor, and multinational wind farm developer Orsted — Bishop worked on a wind farm near Rhode Island. Now he’s doing structural inspections and maintenance on Sunrise Wind, which is under construction off the coast of Long Island in New York.

But the Trump administration’s efforts to crush offshore wind projects, part of its broader assault on clean energy, have created deep uncertainty for training programs like NOWTC and workers like Bishop.

“I would definitely do this forever, and I’ve looked into it since getting the job. But I see contracts are falling through nonstop now in America,” said Bishop. “This might be the last one for a while.”

In 2021, the Biden administration set a target to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, starting from almost zero, which jump-started a massive effort to train people for jobs in the industry. That rapid ramp-up would have required an estimated 77,000 workers — to build the wind farms, connect the turbines to the grid, operate and maintain the facilities, manufacture the rugged steel components, and more.

Read the full article at Grist

Court order could threaten permits for surviving US wind projects

August 19, 2026 — A court decision remanding prior approvals for a wind energy project off New Jersey could pose a new threat to offshore turbine arrays under construction, as the Trump administration presses its relentless campaign against them.

The Aug. 10 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in the District of Columbia granted a request by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to reconsider its permitting for  Atlantic Shores, planned as a 2.8 gigawatt project near Long Beach Island, N.J.

Local activist group Save Long Beach Island had sought a remand and reconsideration of the project’s construction and operations plan, approved in October 2024 in the waning days of the Biden administration.

Save LBI contended that BOEM failed to adequately consider the project’s likely effects under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, among other federal laws.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Trump admin to reconsider permits for Atlantic Shores wind project

August 13, 2026 — In the latest blow to the offshore wind industry, a federal court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to reconsider permits for the Atlantic Shores project off the coast of New Jersey.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Monday that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could review the construction permits it issued to the project. The permits were issued under the Biden administration.

“Remand is appropriate here in the interest of judicial economy and in light of the lack of prejudice to Atlantic Shores,” the order read.

Read the full article at E&E News

NJ Sues Dept. Of Defense For Halting Wind Farm Safety Reviews

July 20, 2026 — On Thursday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport joined 18 other states in suing the U.S. Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for what Davenport says was Hegseth’s illegal decision to suddenly stop doing safety reviews of wind farms under construction across the country.

No wind farm has been built off New Jersey or New York yet. The only wind farm off New Jersey that’s the closest to starting operations is Empire Wind, which is currently under construction 19 miles off Long Branch.

Empire Wind is about 60 percent complete; they started installing monopiles (the towers that hold the wind blades) into the ocean floor last summer; see these photos of the wind farm site under construction last August.

Read the full article at The Patch

Court dismisses lawsuit over Gulf oil and gas analysis after ‘God Squad’ ruling

June 26, 2026 — A federal judge has ruled a lawsuit seeking more analysis of the effect of oil and gas activities on endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico is moot after the “God Squad” handed down an exemption from federal protections in the region earlier this year.

In a decision issued from the bench Wednesday, Judge Deborah Boardman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed a challenge to NOAA Fisheries’ 2025 biological opinion. Environmental groups claimed the analysis was arbitrary and capricious and repeated errors of an earlier biological opinion.

Boardman, a Biden appointee, has yet to issue an order publicly explaining her rationale for the decision.

Read the full article at E&E News

US Supreme Court declines to hear challenge to 2018 Trump tariffs on China

June 18, 2026 — The U.S. Supreme Court has denied to hear a case that targeted the 2018 Section 301 tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term.

Trump issued a series of Section 301 tariffs targeting Chinese goods, including seafood, in 2018, kicking off a trade war between the two countries. Those tariffs, launched as a means of combating alleged intellectual property theft, were maintained through the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and currently still stand eight years later.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trump moves to reopen Pacific remote waters for fishing

June 12, 2026 — A June 11 executive order by President Trump will open some fishing grounds in the U.S. western Pacific, the latest in years of restricting and then reopening national marine monument waters during the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations.

Like Trump’s earlier lifting of restrictions on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument, the western Pacific opening has been long sought by commercial fishermen.

In March the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council voted to restore commercial fishing access across several U.S. Pacific marine national monuments including the Pacific Islands Heritage, Rose Atoll, Marinas Trench, and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monuments to federally managed commercial fisheries.

“By restoring commercial fishing in the remote Pacific, we are creating new economic opportunity for coastal communities and restoring U.S. seafood competitiveness,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in announcing the decision.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman