Saving Seafood

Massachusetts: Local fishing stakeholders marshal opposition to drilling proposal

February 12, 2018 — So the Winter Olympics are rolling on the Korean peninsula and everybody seems to be on their best behavior and we’re all still alive to tell the tale. So that’s a good thing.

Here’s another good thing. You might have noticed we have coverage in today’s Gloucester Daily Times and on gloucestertimes.com of the double-showing Saturday of the fishing documentary “Dead in the Water” at the Cape Ann Museum.

Both screenings were sold out. But what was really interesting was the composition of the crowds. These weren’t the usual faces when it comes to Gloucester fishing. These weren’t the folks you see at the New England Fishery Management Council meetings or at other public forums. These weren’t permit holders and guys who work on boats.

 In the first two public showings of the documentary in Gloucester, a diverse Gloucester turned out.

The audiences for both screenings featured a cross-sampling of the Cape Ann community concerned enough about one of the region’s iconic-if-imperiled industries to give up a chunk of their Saturday to watch the film and begin to understand the withering complexities of the fishing crisis.

So, good for them. And good for the Cape Ann Museum for stepping up to host the screenings and subsequent panel discussions.

As an aside, we must concede we’re really not much for the Winter Games here at FishOn.

We like the skiing and love the hockey when the best players in the world are playing. But ixnay on the curling and skating and luge (Look, either sit down like a normal person or at least lay down so you know where you’re going.)

And don’t get us started on the biathalon. Ski for a while and then stop and shoot. Why? It all seems rather arbitrary. Why not have them ski for a while and then change a tire or grout some tile?

Willin’ to be drilling?

Things should get nice and toasty at the Hyatt Regency in Boston on the afternoon of Feb. 27 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management hosts a public hearing on the Trump administration’s proposal to open the ocean floor off New England to potential drilling and exploration for gas, oil and, for all we know, wolfram.

It’s a sweeping proposal, potentially opening up more than 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf to drilling and other invasive exploration.

More to the point, the plan is extraordinary iffy for only two reasons:

Most people — you know, everybody not scurrying around to scoop up mineral rights and leases — hate it and it has the superhero power of uniting the commercial fishing industry, environmentalists, the management councils and the recreational fishing industry in the same fight. On the same side.

Local fishing stakeholders, including the omnipresent Angela Sanfilippo of the Fishing Partnership and Support Services (as well as the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association) are calling out the hordes to attend the hearing and marshal opposition.

So go, make thy own self heard.

Ornery down below the border line

Heading to Myrtle Beach soon for a little break in the action? Nice. Believe it or not there’s one restaurant named Mrs. Fish and another named Mr. Fish. They’re unaffiliated and they’re both really good.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

R.I.’s governor urges opposition to Atlantic offshore drilling plan

February 9, 2018 — Gov. Gina Raimondo is urging Rhode Islanders to speak up against a federal plan that would open waters off the state’s coast to drilling for oil and gas.

In an interview in her State House office, she said the Trump administration’s plan to overturn an Obama-era ban on offshore drilling along the nation’s East Coast poses a threat to Rhode Island’s commercial fishing industry and the beaches along the state’s 400 miles of coastline.

Raimondo said she requested the meeting with The Providence Journal to raise public awareness about the drilling plan. It was the first time in her tenure as governor that she has asked for such a meeting in regard to an environmental issue.

“I find the whole thing to be really quite alarming,” she said. “This might happen if we don’t oppose it loudly enough.”

In January 1996, the barge North Cape spilled 828,000 gallons of home heating oil off Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, killing thousands of shore birds and millions of lobsters.

It is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in Rhode Island history, but the size of the spill was relatively small. The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in Alaska totaled 11 million gallons of crude while the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill may have released up to 20 times that amount into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The greatest concern would be an oil spill,” Raimondo said. “I was in high school when Exxon Valdez happened so I still remember that very vividly. The BP oil spill seems like it was yesterday. That could happen here. I think Rhode Islanders need to know that.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically-recoverable oil on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Less than a tenth of the total potential resources are on the Atlantic coast.

The proposal released by the Department of the Interior in January would take effect from 2019 to 2024. Lease sales for the North Atlantic region would take place in 2021.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

 

California says will block crude oil from Trump offshore drilling plan

February 9, 2018 — SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will block the transportation through its state of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.

California’s plan to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the most forceful step yet by coastal states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing.

Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.

“I am resolved that not a single drop from Trump’s new oil plan ever makes landfall in California,” Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, chair of the State Lands Commission and a Democratic candidate for governor, said in an emailed statement.

The commission sent a letter on Wednesday to the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) urging the bureau’s program manager Kelly Hammerle to withdraw the draft proposal, saying the public did not have an adequate opportunity to provide input on the plan.

”It is certain that the state would not approve new pipelines or allow use of existing pipelines to transport oil from new leases onshore,” the commission wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.

California has clashed repeatedly with President Donald Trump’s administration over a range of other issues since last year, from climate change to automobile efficiency standards to immigration.

The Interior Department last month announced its proposal to open nearly all U.S. offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, sparking protests from coastal states, environmentalists and the tourism industry.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

Fisheries and Offshore Wind Working Group To Meet Monday in New Bedford, Mass.

February 9, 2018 (Saving Seafood) – WASHINGTON – A fisheries and offshore wind working group is scheduled to meet with offshore wind developers next Monday, February 12 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The meeting will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. ET at UMass Dartmouth’s new School for Marine Science and Technology East building, 836 S. Rodney French Boulevard Room 102. Members of the public are encouraged to attend.

The Fisheries Working Group on Offshore Wind Energy is comprised of commercial fishermen, representatives from various fishing ports and sectors, recreational fishermen, scientists, and state and federal agencies. It is one of two working groups organized by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, along with a working group focused on marine habitat. The group was created to give stakeholders a chance to provide feedback and raise issues with offshore wind developers and the government.

Monday’s meeting will include three offshore wind energy developers – Deepwater Wind, Vineyard Wind, and Orsted – as well as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. One focus of the meeting will be discussing a plan for an independent offshore wind and fisheries science advisory panel to help identify and fill key science and data gaps. Members of the public are encouraged to attend the meeting.

 

East Coast of U.S. Emerging Into a Hotbed for Offshore Wind

February 7, 2018 — Atlantic coast states might be protesting President Trump’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling, but they’re increasingly embracing a different kind of seaborne energy: wind.

States bordering the outer continental shelf are looking for carbon-free electricity, even as the Trump administration rolls back rules requiring it.

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that his state will aim for 3,500 megawatts of installed offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 1 million homes. Massachusetts has a goal to build 1,600 MW of offshore wind power by 2027, and New York has committed to 2,400 MW by 2030.

At the same time, wind technology is quickly advancing, thanks to its popularity in Europe. Ten countries across Europe had deployed 12,600 MW of offshore wind power by the end of 2016. In the United States, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued 13 wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast. In late 2016, the first offshore wind farm in the United States came online about 4 miles off the coast of Block Island, R.I.

It’s unclear how the growth in offshore wind might be affected by Trump’s plan to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas drilling.

But there are hints that the two types of development could come into contact on the open water.

According to BOEM’s draft proposed 2019-24 offshore oil and gas leasing plan, any drilling off the Atlantic Seaboard would have to be “coordinated” with current and future offshore wind development. The agency predicts that more wind projects are likely to be built between 2019 and 2024, when oil and gas lease sales are slated to be held.

Experts said it’s unlikely there would be direct competition for the same slice of ocean between the two industries. But that’s a hard question to answer.

Kevin Book, managing director of research for ClearView Energy Partners LLC, said it’s too early to know how offshore wind and oil and gas development might interact off the East Coast. Historically, offshore wind has been a nascent industry, and no one has drilled for oil in the Atlantic for decades. It’s been so long that developers have little idea what type of oil reserves lie under the sea, or if oil companies will want to tap them.

Read the full story from Scientific American/E&E news at IEEFA

 

Environmental groups protest oil exploration

February 7, 2018 — Surrounded by protest signs against drilling for oil off Delaware’s coastline, environmentalists and other concerned citizens from across the state gathered in Dover to voice their concerns over a proposal by the federal government to open East Coast waters to offshore drilling.

In early January, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said the majority of federal waters could be open to offshore oil and gas exploration if a revised National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program is accepted. The five-year leasing program runs from 2019 to 2024.

Organized by Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute Executive Director Suzanne Thurman, the Jan. 18 protest attracted nearly three dozen people who packed into a small conference room of the Holiday Inn.

Among them was Lewes Mayor Ted Becker. Pointing to Sussex County’s two strongest industries, agriculture and tourism, he said an accident would affect everyone. There’s a lot of concern about what this potentially could mean, Becker said.

The rally occurred as the federal government’s Bureau of Energy Management was hosting a public meeting in the hotel’s large conference room. It was one of 23 meetings scheduled throughout the country. A couple of days before the Dover meeting, BOEM staff met in Annapolis.

Beyond the obvious potential environmental impacts, speakers also addressed other issues, like employee safety and styles of oil platforms.

John Doerfler, representing Delaware Surfrider, said the proposed draft puts oil company employees at great risk because it rolls back safety measures. “They’re putting the lives of the men and women who work for those companies at risk, just so they can fatten their pockets,” Doerfler said.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette

 

Opponents, supporters react to Trump’s offshore drilling plan

February 6, 2018 — Environmentalists, fishermen, and state governments are signaling their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed plan to reopen the ocean off Cape Cod and New England to oil and gas exploration.

“We are skeptical of anything the Trump Administration is doing in the marine environment or anything they are proposing to do,” said Conservation Law Foundation Vice President Priscilla Brooks.

A 2016 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report estimated nearly 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas existed in mostly unexplored areas of the U.S. continental shelf. The new push for fossil fuel exploration and recovery was announced Jan. 4 with the unveiling of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. It is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to make the U.S. more energy independent.

Currently, offshore fossil fuel exploration is controlled by a BOEM plan finalized near the end of the Obama presidency. Obama invoked a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to give what he said would be permanent protection from drilling to the continental shelf from Virginia to Maine.

But there were doubts that Obama’s use of the 1953 law would hold up in court, and the new plan is meant to replace the current one. International Association of Drilling Contractors President Jason McFarland hailed the inclusion of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and an expansion of Gulf of Mexico drilling areas as an important step in achieving the goal of U.S. energy dominance in the world.

“IADC has long argued for access to areas that hold potential for oil and gas development,” McFarland wrote in comments last month, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate of a 48 percent growth in worldwide energy demand over the next 20 years. “The number and scale of the recoverable resources is large, and can lead to thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in investment.”

But the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and the various fishermen’s associations have panned the proposal. Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council approved a comment letter to BOEM that requested Mid-Atlantic and Northern Atlantic lease areas be excluded from the exploration and drilling.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Attorneys general urge offshore drilling plan’s cancellation

February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.

“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”

Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.

The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Fishing Managers: Oil Drilling in Atlantic is a Bad Idea

January 31, 2018 — Northeast fishing managers say offshore drilling for oil and gas off of New England and the mid-Atlantic states could jeopardize marine life and industries.

The New England Fishery Management Council agreed to send a letter to the federal Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management on Tuesday calling for the exclusion of East Coast waters from oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf region. The council reports to the federal government and its recommendation applies from Maine to North Carolina.

Read the full story at Maine Public 

 

NEFMC Takes Final Action on Deep-Sea Coral Amendment; Comments on Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling in North Atlantic

January 31, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has taken final action on its Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment and voted to submit the document to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for review and approval.

In June of 2017, the Council adopted coral protection zones for the Gulf of Maine. Yesterday, at its meeting in Portsmouth, NH, the Council, after extensive debate, approved a 600-meter minimum depth “broad zone” for the continental slope and canyons south of Georges Bank. Once the amendment is implemented, this zone – with one exception – will be closed to all bottom-tending gear, meaning both mobile gear such as trawls and dredges and fixed gear such as traps and gillnets. The Council approved an exemption for the Atlantic deep-sea red crab pot fishery.

The 600-meter minimum depth broad zone, known as Option 6 in the Coral Amendment, was the Council’s preferred alternative for the continental slope and canyons prior to public hearings. However, the Council postponed final action last June in order to consider an additional proposal put forward by environmental groups. Known as Option 7, the new proposal covered more bottom and included shallower depths, ranging between 300 meters and 550 meters. Option 7 would have prohibited mobile bottom-tending gear but not fixed gear.

The Council’s Habitat Plan Development Team, using trawl vessel monitoring system data to identify fishing grounds, edited the Option 7 boundary to reduce economic impacts.

Before making a final determination, the Council considered extensive analyses of:

  • Option 6, the 600-meter minimum zone
  • Option 7 as revised, the 300-meter to 550-meter zone
  • Option 6/7 combined with Option 7 for mobile bottom-tending gear and Option 6 for all bottom-tending gear. An exemption for the deep-sea red crab pot fishery was considered for all options.

In the end, the Council selected the 600-meter broad zone, which encompasses 25,153 square miles. This option, which also was recommended by the Habitat Committee and Advisory Panel, covers: 75% of the known coral within the zone; 75% of the areas highly or very highly suitable as habitat for soft corals; and 85% of the areas with slopes greater than 30°. It also has lower economic impacts on fishermen using mobile bottom-tending gear.

Gulf of Maine 

Here’s a recap of what the Council approved last June for the Gulf of Maine:

  • Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mt. Desert Rock – The Council adopted a discrete coral protection zone for each of these areas where mobile bottom-tending gear (trawls and dredges) will be prohibited. Other types of fishing gear will be allowed, including lobster traps/pots.
  • Jordan Basin DHRA – The Council designated a Dedicated Habitat Research Area in Jordan Basin on/around the 114 fathom bump site, which encompasses roughly 40 square miles. This designation is meant to focus attention on the coral habitats at this site. The Council believes additional research on corals and fishing gear impacts should be directed here. No fishing restrictions are proposed at this time.

The Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment also specifies that anyone conducting research activities in coral zones would be required to obtain a letter of acknowledgement from NMFS’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office.

Once the amendment is implemented, changes to the following provisions will be allowable through framework adjustments: (1) adding, revising, or removing coral protection zones; (2) changing fishing restrictions; and (3) adopting or changing special fishery programs.

Offshore and Oil Gas Drilling 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is soliciting comments through March 9, 2018 on its Draft National 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, which includes the North and Mid-Atlantic Planning Areas. The Council agreed to send a letter to BOEM recommending exclusion of these two areas from the five-year plan because oil and gas exploration and extraction activities in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf involve inappropriate risks that “may harm living marine resources and the communities that depend on them.” The draft plan proposes lease sales in 2021 and 2023 for the North Atlantic area and in 2020, 2022, and 2024 for the Mid-Atlantic area.

The New England Council previously submitted oil and gas development comments to BOEM and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on June 29, 2017 and August 15, 2017. In the August letter and reiterated in this next letter, the Council broke down its concerns into five categories, which involve the following:

  • Direct displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities in offshore environments;
  • Harm to sensitive, deep-water benthic habitats, including deep-sea corals, due to extraction activities;
  • Negative impacts on living marine resources due to highdecibel sounds emitted during seismic gas surveys and drilling operations, including potential harm to some of the 28 species managed by the New England Council;
  • Negative impacts to nearshore fish habitats due to infrastructure development needed to support an Atlantic oil and gas industry; and
  • Risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from oil and gas extraction and transport.

The Council also supported developing a report to spatially document the value of fisheries on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf. The report will be used when developing future comments related to both renewable and non-renewable offshore energy.

More Information

View the release in its entirety here.