Saving Seafood

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

LOUISIANA: GOP says Biden administration protecting whales instead of Louisiana jobs

September 2, 2023 — U.S. House Republicans are preparing to investigate a recent court settlement that pits one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals against potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues and thousands of jobs for Louisiana.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said President Joe Biden’s administration created the confrontation by using the settlement of a federal lawsuit in Maryland to circumvent time-consuming environmental regulatory procedures.

The Aug. 23 deal expands the protected Gulf of Mexico habitat of Rice’s whales — the only indigenous whale in American waters.

Only about 100 Rice’s whales exist, mostly off Florida’s coast, where there is little oil and gas activity. Recently, sonar findings, a confirmed sighting in 2017 and an unconfirmed sighting in July indicate that the whales — which measure about 40 feet long and weigh about 60,000 pounds — may also live off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, where there is far more energy activity.

Read the full article at Nola.com

Blow to Biden as offshore wind auction in Gulf of Mexico fails to stir interest

September 2, 2023 — The Biden administration on Tuesday held the first ever auction for the right to develop offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico, with just one of the three available leases provisionally awarded and only two bidders.

The historic sale fell on the anniversaries of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and 2021’s Hurricane Ida, climate crisis-fueled disasters that devastated Gulf communities. It also comes the day after the Gulf cities of New Orleans and Houston saw their hottest temperatures in recorded history, and as the largest wildfire in state history ravages Louisiana.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held auctions on one lease area off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two others off the coast of Galveston, Texas, which together have the capacity to power almost 1.3m homes. Last month, officials said the sale would show that the Gulf – currently the nation’s primary source of offshore oil and gas – can become a key player in a new green economy.

But the result was anti-climatic, with neither of the two lease areas off the Texas coast receiving bids. The German developer RWE was provisionally awarded the third area off Louisiana, beating out just one other bidder.

Several factors may have put a damper on developer interest, the newsletter Heatmap reported last week. Gulf wind speeds are often lower than other coastal areas’, requiring the use of specific turbines for which a robust supply chain must be developed. No Gulf states’ energy policies specifically require the use of offshore wind. And analysts say building out offshore wind in the Gulf will be more expensive than in the north-east, making it harder for wind projects to compete in local energy markets, where existing energy prices are lower.

Read the full article at the Guardian

Experts fear American fishing industry, boating at risk as Biden prioritizes climate, green energy

August 29, 2023 — The Biden administration has prioritized green energy at the expense of endangered whales and the U.S. fishing industry with regulation that limits both commercial fishing and recreational boating, according to experts.

The Vessel Strike Reduction Rule is a new rule proposed by the Biden administration’s Commerce Department in partnership with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that would limit the speed of all motorboats over 35 feet from Florida to Massachusetts to 10 knots, or 11.5 miles per hour, for up to seven months of the year. The rule is marketed as a way to protect the endangered right whale, but fishing experts and anglers say the move would have far-reaching implications for their industry.

Meghan Lapp, the fisheries liaison for Seafreeze Ltd., the largest producer and trader of sea-frozen seafood on the U.S. East Coast, told Fox News Digital there are complexities behind fishing that require anglers to know where they can go and what they are allowed to do in that area.

“It’s funny because we joke like you need a law degree to go fishing, but that’s actually the level of regulation that us commercial fishermen are held to,” Lapp said.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration has made fishing more difficult in “pretty much every way they can” under the guise of climate protections, such as the expansion of offshore wind energy infrastructure with marine protected areas at the expense of domestic commercial fishing.

Read the full article at Fox News

Fishermen slam Biden admin’s offshore wind push as threat to jobs, sea life

August 9, 2023 — New England fishermen are sounding the alarm on studies that reveal offshore wind turbines emit electic currents that are deforming lobster and haddock, and “imitate effects of climate change” by raising ocean surface temperatures.

The New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) on Monday released an Offshore Wind Research Summary, a compilation of scholarly articles that identify dangers offshore wind farms pose to ocean ecosystems.

NEFSA concluded that there is “no scientific consensus as to the effects of offshore wind on ocean ecosystems and marine life,” and is demanding that the Biden administration conduct the necessary studies before green-lighting offshore wind.

Read the full article at Fox News

Biden administration blasted for ‘hypocrisy’ on offshore wind as it scrambles to probe whale deaths

August 2, 2023 — The Biden administration appears to be scrambling for research on the conflict between wind turbines and a highly endangered whale species on the East Coast following reports of “unprecedented” whale deaths.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a regulatory body from the Department of Interior that leases offshore areas for energy development, posted a grant notice in May targeted at “addressing key information gaps in acoustic ecology of the North Atlantic Right Whales,” one of the most endangered whale species in the world.

The problem is the government has already approved offshore wind projects, and some experts are saying the attention to the whales is too little too late.

Fisherman in the region are calling the government “hypocritical” after the same federal agencies almost “regulated [them] completely out of business” in an effort to protect the endangered species without any data showing fishermem bring any harm to the right whale.

Read the full article at Fox News

White House seeks input on National Strategy for a Sustainable Ocean Economy

July 27, 2023 — The Biden administration is looking for input on a new National Strategy for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which will build on the Ocean Climate Action Plan released in March.

According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the national strategy will guide how the federal government “can best advance sustainable management of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources and ecosystems of the United States.” While the U.S. marine economy makes up nearly two percent of national gross domestic product, America’s ocean resources are under threat, the government claims.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Biden elects not to enact vaquita-related trade embargo on Mexico

July 19, 2023 — U.S. President Joe Biden will not issue an embargo on Mexican wildlife products, which he was entitled to do after Mexico was found in breach of a U.S. law requiring federal action against countries found to be violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Department of Fish and Wildlife found Mexico in breach of the Pelly Amendment in May 2023, requiring Biden to decide whether to take punitive trade action against Mexico or explain his reason for not doing so. Mexico has not adequately protected the critically endangered totoaba from fishing or trading, which has “diminished the effectiveness” of CITES, according to the declaration. Illegal fishing for the totoaba has also resulted in the deaths of numerous critically endangered vaquita porpoises.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource