Saving Seafood

Haunting clues emerge in 7-year fishing boat mystery after wreckage found off island

October 14, 2026 — An organization believes it has found the wreckage of a fishing boat that sank over seven years ago — potentially solving a mystery surrounding the deaths of two fishermen.

Green Oceans, a Rhode Island-based environmental organization, announced the discovery of what it believes is the F/V Mistress in the waters off Block Island in September.

The vessel sank Jan. 1, 2019, according to the organization.

Two fishermen died in the incident, and the U.S. Coast Guard searched for the vessel following the sinking but never located the wreckage.

The F/V Mistress was discovered approximately 92 feet underwater, just 50 feet from the base of a wind turbine at the Block Island Wind Farm, according to Green Oceans.

Read the full article at Fox News

Opinion: Reopen the investigation of the F/V Mistress

October 1, 2026 — The fishing vessel Mistress sank in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2019. Two of its three crew members were lost. More than seven years later, a private dive team documented a wreck believed to be the Mistress, roughly 50 feet from Turbine 1 at the Block Island Wind Farm.

That location deserves attention. In its mayday call, the crew said the vessel was “right below the Block Island Wind Farm.” A Coast Guard helicopter searched near the coordinates of the final distress signal but then abandoned a hover search after about half an hour amid poor visibility, low clouds, “windmills,” and high winds.

The team making the recent discovery used the mayday coordinates, the Coast Guard’s investigative report, and rumored accounts from mariners and divers to narrow its search. Side-scan sonar revealed wreckage just east of Turbine 1. Divers documented features and equipment that match photographs of the Mistress in the Coast Guard report. They also found what appear to be human remains among the wheelhouse debris.

The wreck was not the first indication of boat debris near the turbine. A BOEM-sponsored survey reported seeing “partial boat debris (e.g., paneling from a small boat hull)” around Turbine 1 in 2019, although it claims no footage was obtained. Why was that observation apparently never connected to the loss of the Mistress?

The new sonar image also shows a maintenance barge beside the turbine, with its legs or “spuds” planted close to the wreckage. Given the recurring maintenance activity at Turbine 1 since 2019, investigators should determine what seabed checks were performed, what operators observed, and whether earlier work disturbed the site.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Wind farms and rescue helicopters don’t mix, fishermen warned years ago. They were right

September 30, 2026 — An expedition team this week identified the wreck of the Mistress, a fishing vessel that sank next to a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island on Jan. 1, 2019, taking with it the captain and his nephew.

The discovery of the long-missing trawler and the remains of the two fishermen prompted demands for a federal investigation into whether the wind farm operator, Orsted, discovered the wreck years ago and kept it quiet.

The Mistress wreck has also revived calls to examine the safety risks associated with offshore wind turbines that, when positioned closely together, can make it virtually impossible for the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct nighttime rescues of distressed vessels, particularly in stormy weather.

The exact cause of the Mistress’ sinking hasn’t been determined.

There is no evidence the ship struck the easternmost turbine of the Block Island Wind Farm, where a private diving crew recently identified the sunken boat.

But the turbines forced the Coast Guard to abandon their rescue attempt in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2019, when the Mistress had taken on water during a sudden storm and the captain issued a mayday call.

“They had a helicopter there, and they had to let it go,” said John Ansay, whose son, John Ansay Jr., went down with the Mistress two days after his 31st birthday.

Read the full article at The Washington Times

The seal population is growing in Rhode Island. Does that mean fewer fish and more sharks?

April 25, 2025 — July Lewis of Save The Bay sees seals as an indicator of environmental health, so she was encouraged when her organization recently counted 755 in Rhode Island waters.

“It tells us the bay is really healthy, and the coastal waters are as well,” said Lewis, Save The Bay’s volunteer and internship manager.

On March 27, forty-three volunteers fanned out along the shore and water at low tide to count seals in Save The Bay’s annual effort. They counted 551 in Narragansett Bay and 204 at Block Island. Save The Bay is a nonprofit organization, which defines its mission as promoting a healthy Narragansett Bay that is accessible to everyone.

The bay’s seal population has been steady over the past several years, while the Block Island population has increased, according to Lewis.

Fisherman: Seals have “voracious” appetites

Chris Brown, 57, who fishes out of Point Judith on his 45-foot Proud Mary, said, “I’ve never seen so many seals in my life.”

“Seals don’t eat potatoes,” Brown said. “They have voracious appetites.”

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

First offshore wind farm goes offline: An industry warning?

November 2, 2020 — In the new year, the first offshore wind farm in the United States will shut off its turbines, and its customers on nearby Block Island in Rhode Island will revert to diesel generation.

The rocky saeabed around Block Island has been worn away by tides and storms, sometimes exposing high-voltage cables in a popular swimming location that developers failed to bury deep enough when the facility was brought online in 2016. To splice in newly buried cables, the wind farm will go offline for a brief period this spring.

At $30 million for one leg of the fix and an undisclosed amount for the other, it’s a costly problem to crop up for the nation’s first offshore wind farm, and it’s not totally isolated.

Read the full story at E&E News

President’s windmill hatred is a worry for booming industry

October 1, 2019 — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.

Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.

“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”

But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.

He’s called them “disgusting” and “ugly” and “stupid,” denouncing them in hundreds of anti-wind tweets and public comments dating back more than a decade, when he tried and failed to block a wind farm near his Scottish golf course.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Special zone around Block Island proposed

September 16, 2019 — OK, you fish Block Island and want to bring your black sea bass, summer flounder or scup catch back to your home port in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut or New York. You caught the fish in state waters — within the three-mile limit surrounding Block Island (federal water is from three to 200 miles offshore) and you have a state fishing permit.

But here’s the catch. To get those Block Island fish home you need to cross federal waters as Block Island’s northern tip is about seven miles from shore. So you will need to cross a mile-wide section of federal waters, and if you do, you may be transporting them illegally.

The State of Rhode Island, under the leadership of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), has been advocating to establish a Block Island Sound Transit Zone for state-only permitted vessels fishing in, and returning to state waters.

The transit zone would mirror the current transit area for striped bass and allow for transit by state-only permitted commercial, party/charter vessels and private recreational anglers with summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass on board that were legally harvested in state waters.

Read the full story at The Providence Journal

Wind turbines and fishing nets fight for offshore space

September 10, 2019 — If Block Island represents the promise of offshore wind, the industry faces a series of challenges lurking just beneath the surface of the waves. Opponents of offshore wind have raised concerns ranging from the turbines’ impact on military radar to worries they could clog shipping channels. Perhaps most dangerous to developers’ ambitions: the growing and increasingly coordinated opposition from the commercial fishing industry.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt recently delayed Vineyard Wind, an 84-turbine project planned for the shallow waters 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, out of concern for its impact on fishing. The $2.8 billion project had been scheduled to begin construction this fall, putting it on course to become the first large-scale offshore wind development in the United States.

Now its future looks less certain. Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist who has made deregulation a hallmark of his tenure, has said he will not allow the project to proceed until a cumulative impact study of all the projects planned along the Eastern Seaboard can be completed (Climatewire, Aug. 12).

Read the full story at National Wind Watch

Rhode Island fishermen critical of wind farm plan

August 5, 2019 — The nation’s first major offshore wind farm won a key approval from Rhode Island regulators in February, but only after stirring acrimony within the state’s fishing industry.

Now, amid an atmosphere of suspicion created by the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project, the next offshore wind proposal in line is being considered for a key approval by the state Coastal Resources Management Council. And there are concerns that the project, the South Fork Wind Farm, will lead to more difficulties for commercial fishermen who ply their trade in the waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Just like with Vineyard Wind, the potential complications arise from the orientation and spacing of the project’s turbines.

Developers Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy say that they’ve taken into account the concerns of fishermen by configuring the wind farm’s up to 15 turbines from east to west with rows that are 1 nautical mile (about 1.2 miles) apart. The spacing from north to south, however, would be smaller, with either 0.8 or 1 mile between turbines.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Anglers want more say in offshore wind projects

July 1, 2019 — As the charter fishing vessel Seven B’s V relentlessly pounded through 2-foot chop, the slowly revolving blades of five offshore wind turbines rose out of the bank of morning fog and drizzle. Three miles off the southeast corner of Block Island, these turbines supply power to the island, replacing diesel generators that burned a million gallons of fuel each year and emitted 40,000 tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere.

But a beneficial byproduct of these 390-foot-tall turbines is hidden beneath the waves.

Fish.

Soon after the turbines were installed in 2016, algae and other sea vegetation started growing on the 90 feet of support columns underwater. Mussels followed, then fish.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times