Saving Seafood

Environmental Groups Decry BOEM Failure to Conduct Environmental Review Before Offshore Wind Designations in Gulf of Maine

September 20, 2022 — The following was released by the Conservation Law Foundation:

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has declined to conduct a comprehensive environmental review before designating areas for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine. Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and several partners had pushed for a full review to be done before wind areas are chosen.

“This decision epitomizes short-term thinking that will only cause problems in the long run,” said Erica Fuller, Senior Attorney at CLF. “It’s simply backwards to choose areas for offshore wind development before doing a full environmental analysis, which would ultimately save time and money if done now. It is critical to advance offshore wind to respond to the climate crisis and clean up our electric grid, but it must be done in a science-based, inclusive and transparent way.”

Considered to be one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, the Gulf of Maine plays a significant role in the culture of New England and is the foundation for a coastal economy characterized by commercial and recreational fishing, aquaculture, recreational boating, shipping, and tourism.

CLF was joined in this effort by 350NH, Acadia Center, Blue Ocean Society, Friends of Casco Bay, Island Institute, League of Conservation Voters, Maine Conservation Voters, Maine Audubon, Mass. Audubon, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Council of Maine, NRDC, New England Aquarium, New Hampshire Audubon, Oceana, and Surfrider Foundation.

Biden plans floating platforms to expand offshore wind power

September 19, 2022 — The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to develop floating platforms in the deep ocean for wind towers that could power millions of homes and vastly expand offshore wind in the United States.

The plan would target sites in the Pacific Ocean off the California and Oregon coasts, as well as in the Atlantic in the Gulf of Maine.

President Joe Biden hopes to deploy up to 15 gigawatts of electricity through floating sites by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes. The administration has previously set a goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 using traditional technology that secures wind turbines to the ocean floor.

There are only a handful of floating offshore platforms in the world — all in Europe — but officials said the technology is developing and could soon establish the United States as a global leader in offshore wind.

The push for offshore wind is part of Biden’s effort to promote clean energy and address global warming. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. A climate-and-tax bill he signed last month would spend about $375 billion over 10 years to boost electric vehicles, jump-start renewable energy such as solar and wind power and develop alternative energy sources like hydrogen.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

How a 100-turbine wind farm is about to change Newport County’s oceanfront views

September 19, 2022 — Within five years, Rhode Island’s horizon will be unmistakably altered to any beachgoer, fisherman or waterfront homeowner gazing out to sea, and the coastal Atlantic from Martha’s Vineyard to Long Island will be dotted with wind turbines arranged in orderly grids like trees in an orchard.

They will appear small in perspective, and tower in reality over the men and women who go out on boats to service them, the blades rotating to the height of an 80-story building, 873 feet high at the peak of every electricity-generating revolution.

The Revolution Wind lease, located approximately 15 miles south of Little Compton’s coastline, is the closest to Rhode Island of 10 offshore wind farms currently being developed in a huge tract of southern New England’s coastal waters.

Read the full article at the Newport Daily News

Recommendations released for fisheries managers to help adapt to climate change

September 19, 2022 — The University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) has released new research providing key recommendations for helping U.S. fisheries adapt to impacts by climate change and, ultimately, protect the livelihoods of fishermen.

The research evaluated management of over 500 fisheries across the United States to generate design recommendations for harvest-control rules (HCRs) – guidelines to determine how much of a stock can be fished based on indicators of the targeted stock’s status. These recommendations aim to ensure sustainable fisheries and fishing communities in a changing climate.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The Gulf of Maine is simmering, but its lobsters seem fine — for now

September 14, 2022 — Many tourists visiting coastal Maine may at some point purchase a lobster roll, with big chunks of lobster meat, a dash of mayo and a bag of potato chips on the side. But as summers become hotter and sea temperatures rise in the Gulf of Maine, there’s concern that warmer waters will cause the cold water crustacean to move elsewhere, making it harder to satisfy lobster cravings for the region’s tourists.

The Gulf of Maine has been a hotspot for ocean warming, increasing at a rate of 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit each decade in the last 40 years — about three times the global average. At higher water temperatures, lobsters hit what is known as a “stress threshold,” where they become more vulnerable to disease and less likely to reproduce.

But at least in recent years, it seems, the lobster — and some locals who depend on them for their livelihoods — have found success even as their future in warming ocean waters is more uncertain.

Read the full article at the Washington Post

RHODE ISLAND: Anglers Concerned About Effects of Mayflower Wind Project’s Cable on Fish Habitats

September 9, 2022 — An organized group of recreational anglers are opposing a proposal that would bury an export cable from a new offshore wind farm under the Sakonnet River.

The Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association has come out against the proposal from offshore wind developer Mayflower Wind, expressing concerns over the impacts to existing fish habitats, and recreational fishing.

“We believe that during cable installation, an industrial operation such as burying a cable that is more than a foot wide will disturb fishing across the entire River,” wrote RISAA president Greg Vespa in a letter sent last month to Mayflower Wind.

The group instead advocates for Mayflower Wind to avoid using the river entirely and proposed that the company run the cable over land in Massachusetts from Westport to Fall River, where land is already developed and disturbance to habitats would be minimal.

RISAA also expressed concern over the impacts to cod stocks. The New England Fishery Management Council has designated the Sakonnet River as an inshore juvenile cod habitat area of particular concern, and cod fishing remains restricted.

Mayflower Wind said it has conducted extensive field surveys to assess seabed conditions across its entire project area, including the proposed cable corridor in the Sakonnet River. The bottom of the river is mostly mud and silt, with areas of crepidula, a kind of colonizing mollusk, according to preliminary data from the company.

Results of the field surveys will be assessed by the appropriate Rhode Island agencies for potential impacts on fish habitats, but the company asserts the impacts to fishing will remain minimal.

Read the full article at Eco Ri News

Patent ruling delivers blow to GE’s wind turbine business — and to the nascent US offshore wind industry

September 9, 2022 — General Electric made a huge splash four years ago with plans to build what it called the Haliade-X, the most powerful wind-driven turbine to go up in the ocean at the time.

Taller than the Hancock tower. Each blade, roughly as long as a football field. Able to generate enough electricity for at least 6,000 homes. These goliaths would accelerate the adoption of offshore wind power and help Boston-based GE leapfrog its primary rivals in the quickly growing US market, Siemens Gamesa and Vestas. Then in 2020, GE outmaneuvered Vestas for the contract to supply the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, the Vineyard Wind project planned for waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.

However, these grand plans ran into significant turbulence in federal court in Boston on Wednesday, when US District Judge William Young blocked the sale of the Haliade-X in the United States. With only three major players here, taking GE’s modern offshore turbine off the market could complicate life in a big way for US wind-farm developers.

Young’s ruling was based on a jury verdict in June that found several elements of GE’s Haliade-X infringed on a patent held by Siemens Gamesa, a European company considered to be the global market leader in offshore wind. Young allowed Haliade-X turbines to be installed at Vineyard Wind and another wind farm off the New Jersey coast, because they are so far along in development, as long as GE pays royalties. But beyond those projects, the injunction would require GE to come up with a new design. That’s not something that happens overnight.

This decision is a setback for GE, of course. But it may be an even bigger setback for the nation’s nascent offshore wind industry — the latest of many.

For its part, GE’s renewable energy division says it remains committed to the US offshore wind industry and is “confident in the legal and technical options available to us.”

Read the full article at The Boston Globe

New Bedford officials say BOEM must demand mitigation, monitoring from wind developers

September 9, 2022 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management must make a stand on requiring offshore wind developers to commit to mitigation and monitoring to safeguard the $5.5 billion U.S. commercial fishing industry, the New Bedford Port Authority says in a detailed, insistent new commentary to the agency.

“BOEM has the clear statutory authority to require certain actions and hold developers to standards as part of” granting permits for offshore wind projects, the Port Authority says in its nine-page Aug. 22 missive to BOEM Director Amanda Lefton, signed by port authority interim executive director George Krikorian Jr.

“Any ability left to the wind developers to choose their own procedures will always result in them taking the least expensive path most favorable to them, not commercial fishing.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

 

VIRGINIA: Who will pay for Dominion’s $9.8 billion offshore wind farm?

September 8, 2022 — In a regulatory conflict over who should bear the costs of a proposed offshore wind farm in Virginia, the Youngkin Administration and environmental groups have found themselves on the same side, calling for action to limit Dominion’s profits from the project.

In an August ruling that will be finalized later this month, the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) ordered limited consumer protections on the project, while rejecting the more aggressive controls requested by the Youngkin administration and environmental groups like Clean Virginia.

Read the full article at WRIS

Gulf of Maine Research Institute gets $1.3 million for climate, ‘blue economy’ initiatives

September 8, 2022 —

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute has received nearly $1.3 million in federal funding for two initiatives aimed at helping the state’s waterfront communities become more climate-resilient and to support innovation in the seafood industry and other ocean-related enterprises.

The Portland-based institute’s Climate Center will receive $650,000 to help develop local plans for addressing sea level rise and other effects of climate change. GMRI’s Blue Economy Initiative will receive $632,000 to boost the startup and growth of marine businesses.

The grants were included by Sen. Angus King in Congress’ recent 2022 Omnibus Appropriations Package.

“Our mission is to develop collaborative solutions to global ocean challenges,” institute President and CEO Don Perkins said, “and obviously, the existential challenge of our time as climate change. We’re also focused on the mechanics of how do we understand and steward the Gulf of Maine as a changing system, how do we produce sustainable seafood, and how do we support the resilience of our coastal communities?”

Read the full article at the Press Herald