Saving Seafood

U.S. Proposes 8 Wind Energy Areas in Gulf of Maine

May 10, 2024 — Offshore wind is key to Massachusetts meeting its decarbonization goals, particularly the state’s Clean Energy and Climate plan, which commits to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Mass. Clean Energy Center, a state agency established to boost the clean energy sector, anticipates that nearly 60 percent of all electricity in the state will be generated by wind by that year.

Cape Cod fishermen are watching the developments closely, according to Aubrey Ellertson Church, policy manager at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. In an email to the Independent, she said that local fishermen’s primary concern is whether the location of the wind farms would push them out of their traditional fishing areas and into other already-fished areas, increasing competition among boats.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

Feds reveal Outer Cape locations for offshore wind

May 6, 2024 — Locations for offshore wind development have been selected off the Outer Cape.

The Biden administration this week published the location of eight areas proposed for lease in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that runs from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia.

Wind energy developers will have the opportunity to bid on the leases in a future auction.

Six of the areas lie off the coast of Massachusetts and two off New Hampshire and Maine.

The closest to Cape Cod starts 25 miles off the Outer Cape. For comparison, that distance is about the same as the distance from Hyannis to Nantucket Harbor.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

 

He’s the One Who Got Away: New Documentary Tells the Ultimate Fish Story

February 28, 2024 — As a commercial fisherman based in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Michael Packard is accustomed to bringing home the bounty of Cape Cod’s waters. One of the few remaining (if not the very last) of the area’s diving lobstermen, instead of setting traps, Packard dons a wet suit, mask, fins and oxygen tanks to pursue his quarry by hand where it lives on the ocean floor.

But in June 2021, there was a dramatic reversal of fortune when Packard, the predator, became Packard, the prey, as he was hunting for lobsters. That’s when a humpback whale came upon the fisherman and scooped him up in its massive jaws. Packard’s world suddenly turned pitch black as the whale closed its mouth around him. From the deck of Packard’s boat, the Ja’n J, Josiah Mayo, his first mate and friend, had no idea what had happened — until the moment he saw Packard get spat out by the whale and launched through the air. Though he had been inside the whale for roughly 30 seconds, for Packard, it must have felt like an eternity.

Packard’s trip inside the whale made international news. To many, it sounded like an unbelievable fish story, and the modern day Jonah had serious doubters and detractors. But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker David Abel was not one of them. He believed Packard, and in his story, which he wrote for The Boston Globe, he also saw the makings of a documentary film.

“In the Whale,” Abel’s new documentary, recounts the fantastical events surrounding Michael Packard on that June day in 2021. But the documentary also delves into the humble seafaring life of the lobsterman and his family, detailing what they had been through, both before and since that fateful day. “In the Whale” will have its Long Island premiere at 7 p.m. this Saturday at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Abel, a New York native, will be on hand to take part in a Q&A and discussion following the screening.

Abel has been a reporter for 25 years at The Boston Globe, where he covers climate change and environmental issues. Stories on New England’s fisheries, like the one about Michael Packard, are also firmly part of his beat. But in recent years, Abel has also become an accomplished filmmaker, and he explained in a recent interview how that part of his career came into focus.

Read the full article at 27 East

 

Cape residents air objections to current plans for offshore wind

January 30, 2024 — Cape Cod residents who object to the offshore wind plans for Massachusetts — in whole or in part — met for a four-hour conference Saturday in Hyannis.

More than 200 people turned out for the event, organized by Barnstable residents’ group Save Greater Dowses Beach and others.

Susanne Conley, chair of the Dowses Beach group, said the conference aimed to give voice to people who have been derided for their concerns about offshore wind turbines and the infrastructure they require.

“We have pitched a large tent here,” she said. “We do not think alike about ocean wind farms, but we share this: We have been dismissed, ridiculed, gaslighted by ocean wind developers and the federal and state regulatory agencies and officials that, in my opinion, are giving them a much, much too easy pass.”

Speakers pointed to potential harm to wildlife and fisheries, and to the difficulty of rescuing mariners from a storm if turbines are nearby.

Read the full article at nhpr

MASSACHUSETTS: Representative Dylan Fernandes Grants Cape Fishermen $500,000 to Boost Local Fishing Industry

December 2, 2023 — Massachusetts state Rep. Dylan Fernandes presented $500,000 in funding to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance (CCCFA) at the Chatham Fish Pier yesterday.

The funding was earmarked for the Alliance in the state’s 2024 budget for their efforts in modernizing and maintaining sustainable fishing and was part of $1.2 million in funding Fernandes secured for the Cape and Islands during the FY2024 budget process. Of that, $940,000 in funding was devoted to protecting oceans and combating climate change.

“Fishing is not just an industry on the Cape and Islands; it’s woven into the very culture and fabric of our communities,” said Fernandes. “These funds are a pathway toward adaptive fishing practices, healthier oceans, and a sustainable industry that can be passed down to future generations of fishing families.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Can a shellfishing license go to a company? Proposals spark controversy on Cape Cod

November 2, 2023 — On a sandbar just off the coast of Barnstable one recent windy morning, Corey Hendricks picked up a metal mesh bag. It’s one of 125 large bags laid out, all full of young oysters.

“Once they get big enough like this, they’re going to go pretty much straight in the cage,” he said.

Hendricks poured the oysters from the bag into one of 100 cages lined up on the sandbar, then evenly spread out the shellfish to line the bottom.

This setup doesn’t look like the typical image of a farm, but that’s what it is: instead of agriculture, it’s aquaculture. Hendricks said the changing tides jostle the oysters and help them grow.

His company is called Duck Island Oysters, and his farm is 2 acres of offshore public land controlled by the town of Barnstable.

“I have roughly a half a million oysters,” Hendricks said. “And last year we planted 200,000 quahogs. This year another 200,000.”

Shellfishermen in Massachusetts farmed nearly $37 million worth of oysters and quahogs in 2022. Unlike other fisheries, shellfishing is regulated locally by individual cities and towns. But in some Cape communities, there’s been a hot debate over changing those regulations and what it would mean for the future of the industry.

Read the full article at CAI

Cape Cod is one of the world’s largest white shark hotspots, study finds

July 30, 2023 — A first-of-its-kind study found that Cape Cod is one of the world’s largest hotspots for great white sharks.

The new research from the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, UMass Dartmouth and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries determined about 800 white sharks paid a visit to Cape waters between 2015 to 2018. It’s the first time scientists have estimated “white shark abundance” in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to the study.

The numbers from Cape Cod are “comparable to but larger than” previous estimates of white shark populations around South Africa, central California, south Australia and Guadalupe Island in Mexico.

The researchers collected nearly 3,000 videos of shark sightings from 137 trips to Cape beaches.

The shark population peaks on Cape Cod around late summer and into early fall when ocean temperatures are the warmest, findings show.

Read the full article at CBS News

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Lobstermen Would Rather Wait Than Switch

March 23, 2o23 — A 21-year-old North Atlantic right whale known as Porcia was observed in Cape Cod Bay on March 18. The whale was seen swimming with her 2023 calf by her side. And last week, before this first mother-calf pair of the season was spotted, Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement team at the Center for Coastal Studies, estimated there were already between 30 and 40 right whales in the bay.

That means Cape Cod lobstermen are on land, waiting out the whales.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts waters, however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is running an experiment that gives lobster fishermen exempted fishing permits to work in areas that are otherwise restricted. What they are testing is something called on-demand fishing gear — gear operated via an app to minimize the time that lengths of rope stay in the water.

Landry wants to see “our absolute reliance on rope to harvest our food” go away. But for the time being Cape Cod Bay is not the site of any on-demand gear experiments.

Lobsterman Mike Rego, who lives in Truro, is glad about the cautious approach. He sees the strict closures, though they shorten his season, as too important. “I don’t want to lose four months of my fishing season, but I don’t want to kill a whale either,” he said. “The whales are protected while they’re here. Why jeopardize any of that?”

The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with only some 340 animals remaining in the world. The majority of those whales feed in Cape Cod Bay during their thousand-mile spring migration from their calving grounds off the coasts of Georgia and Florida to Canada, where they summer.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

Construction for nation’s largest commercial offshore wind farm underway, but challenges loom

January 23, 2023 — Offshore wind industry experts say that wind could be the answer to minimize our carbon footprint, and here in the U.S., we’re seeing one of the country’s first offshore wind projects come to life off the coast of Massachusetts where the wind will be used as an emissions-free energy source.

Vineyard Wind is currently constructing the country’s largest commercial offshore wind project, and the goal is to use electricity produced by wind turbines to power homes starting in 2023.

“We’re about a year into onshore construction, and we’ve just begun offshore,” said Andrew Doba, spokesperson for Vineyard Wind. “One spin of the turbine will power a home for 24 hours in the U.S.”

There will be 62 turbines spaced about a mile apart that will produce power for about 400,000 homes. The turbines will be constructed about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Underwater cables will bring that energy from the turbines to Covell’s Beach in Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Read the full article at Fox Weather

Technology Making Shark Sightings Off Cape Cod Waters More Accurate

July 19, 2022 — With all the shark activity off Cape Cod waters so far this season, its no wonder the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has added extra technology to make sightings even more accurate.

This past weekend alone, Cape Cod waters had 12 reported shark sightings from Provincetown to Chatham, some as close as 50 yards offshore. The newly updated Sharktivity App has been allowing beachgoers to report their sightings all summer, but new technology in the water is making things even more accurate.

Just recently MassWildife teamed up with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to install two acoustic receiver buoys off Wellfleet beaches. One floats offshore at  Newcomb Hollow and the other is at Lecount Hollow/Maguire Landing. ⁣⁣Both transmit extremely accurate data right to area beach staff.

Last summer several of these buoys were deployed by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy all across the Cape coastline, but the Wellfleet buoys seem to be new this season.

Perhaps it’s the growing amount of shark activity in the area that made these buoys necessary or the tracking devices already placed in white sharks showing researching this is a popular area. Whatever the reason, the buoys are now active, making Cape Cod beach visits much safer.

No word on where the next buoys might be deployed, but if more sharks swim along the SouthCoast (like last week’s Westport shark visit) perhaps we’ll have buoys in our neck of the woods before the summer is over.

The buoys’ technology is extremely helpful to lifeguards on shore since they can tell you when a tagged shark is swimming off the coast and where it might be headed. Beach staff can then use that date to fly the appropriate shark flag to let beachgoers know what is going on.

Read the full article at WBSM