Saving Seafood

Major Massachusetts offshore wind project no longer viable

November 7, 2022 — A major offshore wind project in the Massachusetts pipeline “is no longer viable and would not be able to move forward” under the terms of contracts filed in May. Both developers behind the state’s next two offshore wind projects are asking state regulators to pause review of the contracts for one month amid price increases, supply shortages and interest rate hikes.

Utility executives working with assistance from the Baker administration last year chose Avangrid’s roughly 1,200-megawatt Commonwealth Wind project and a 400 MW project from Mayflower Wind in the third round of offshore wind procurement to continue the state’s pursuit of establishing cleaner offshore wind power. Contracts, or power purchase agreements (PPAs), for the projects were filed with the Department of Public Utilities in May.

But last week, Commonwealth Wind filed a motion for a one-month delay in DPU’s review, telling the state that their project can no longer move forward as planned. A one-month freeze, the developer said, “would give the parties an opportunity to evaluate the current situation facing the project and potentially agree upon changes to the PPAs, along with other measures, that could allow the project to return to viability.”

“As has been publicly reported in recent weeks, global commodity price increases, in part due to ongoing war in Ukraine, sharp and sudden increases in interest rates, prolonged supply chain constraints, and persistent inflation have significantly increased the expected cost of constructing the project. As a result, the project is no longer viable and would not be able to move forward absent amendments to the PPAs,” attorneys for Commonwealth Wind wrote in their motion.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Light

Massachusetts wind power project ‘no longer viable’ without contract adjustments, says developer

November 1, 2022 — The developer for a major offshore wind power project in Massachusetts has asked state regulators to pause review of the contract for one month, saying that global price hikes, inflation and supply chain shortages are disrupting the plan.

The Commonwealth Wind project, which would supply 1,200 megawatts of offshore wind power starting in 2028, “is no longer viable and would not be able to move forward” without amendments to the power purchase agreement (PPA), according to a motion recently filed by the developer.

Attorneys for Commonwealth Wind in the motion cited global commodity price increases, in part because of the war in Ukraine, the sudden spike in interest rates, prolonged supply chain constraints and persistent inflation as reasons for the increased expected cost of construction.

Read the full article at CNBC

Feds unveil plan to grow wind power while sparing rare whale

October 31, 2022 — The federal government has outlined a strategy to try to protect an endangered species of whale while also developing offshore wind power off the East Coast.

President Joe Biden’s administration has made a priority of encouraging offshore wind along the Atlantic coast as the U.S. pursues greater energy independence. Those waters are also home to the declining North Atlantic right whale, which numbers about 340 in the world.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a draft plan this month to conserve the whales while allowing for the building of wind projects. The agencies said the ongoing efforts to save the whales and create more renewable energy can coexist.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Fishermen face shutdowns as warming hurts species

October 28, 2022 — Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back.

Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfishing industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of overfishing that already taxed the population.

Officials in Alaska have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest and winter snow crab harvest, dealing a blow to the Bering Sea crab industry that is sometimes worth more than $200 million a year, as populations have declined in the face of warming waters. The Atlantic cod fishery, once the lifeblood industry of New England, is now essentially shuttered. But even with depleted populations imperiled by climate change, it’s rare for regulators to completely shut down a fishery, as they’re considering doing for New England shrimp.

The Northern shrimp, once a seafood delicacy, has been subject to a fishing moratorium since 2014. Scientists believe warming waters are wiping out their populations and they won’t be coming back. So the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering making that moratorium permanent, essentially ending the centuries-old harvest of the shrimp.

It’s a stark siren for several species caught by U.S. fishermen that regulators say are on the brink. Others include softshell clams, winter flounder, Alaskan snow crabs and Chinook salmon.

Read the full article at ABC News

NEW JERSEY: No deal on offshore power grid

October 27, 2022 — A state agency held off, at least for now, approving projects aimed at bringing power from offshore wind farms to land, but it did allow for $1 billion to upgrade the existing power grid.

The Board of Public Utilities balked at the more expensive projects needed to begin building what is essentially a backbone transmission system off the coast to deliver power ashore. Instead, it opted to wait until federal financial incentives are available to defray the costs to utility customers.

A law signed by President Joe Biden this summer provides lucrative tax credits to operators of offshore wind farms, but those credits are not available to most transmission projects. Several developers had sought approval from the state to build offshore transmission lines from the wind farms to the grid.

Many clean-energy advocates contend a backbone offshore wind transmission system is the most cost-effective and least environmentally disruptive way of connecting offshore power to the customers who need it. By midcentury, offshore wind farms are supposed to provide 27% of the state’s electricity. No offshore wind farm is operating in New Jersey.

Read the full article at New Jersey Spotlight News

U.S. agencies propose to protect whales while building wind power

October 26, 2022 — Federal agencies have put out a new plan to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales, as the government promotes aggressive development of offshore wind energy projects.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and National Marine Fisheries Service released their joint strategy  Oct. 21 “to protect and promote the recovery of North Atlantic right whales while responsibly developing offshore wind energy.”

The announcement initiated a 45-day public review and comment period on the draft strategy. Comments on the guidance can be submitted online via regulations.gov from October 21 to December 4, under Docket Number BOEM-2022-0066.

The plan comes out amid turmoil in the commercial fishing industry over NMFS plans for gear and area restrictions in the Northeast lobster fishery to reduce the danger of entanglement with whales. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is challenging the plans in federal appeals court, as NMFS looks toward potential restrictions on other East Coast fisheries that use fixed gear like fish pots and gill nets.

Meanwhile opponents of offshore wind projects have set their sights on the right whales’ predicament as a strategy to use for challenging wind developers and federal agencies in court. Activists and lawyers organized by the Heartland Institute, a frequent critic of renewable energy programs, say right whales could be key to a challenge of Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Billions of crabs vanished, and scientists have a good clue why

October 25, 2022 — While counting snow crabs at sea in 2021, fisheries biologist Erin Fedewa saw that something was deeply amiss.

Fedewa, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist, spends three or four months with a team that collects crabs from 376 stations in Alaska’s Bering Sea each year. Some of these areas always teem with crabs. Scientists count thousands. But in 2021, thousands dwindled to hundreds.

“The survey last year was a huge red flag for me,” she told Mashable.

The harbingers proved right. The population of snow crabs has crashed after hitting record highs somewhat recently, in 2018. Numbers have fallen so low, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, for the first time, canceled the snow crab fishing season this year. The NOAA abundance surveys found the total snow crab population in the eastern Bering Sea dropped from an estimated 11.7 billion in 2018 down to 1.9 billion in 2022 (these surveys are a critical piece, but not the only piece, that NOAA uses to determine long-term population trends). That’s a drop of well over 80 percent.

The agency thinks a dramatic episode wiped out billions of the creatures.

“As biologists, all we can point to is some sort of large-scale mortality event,” Fedewa said.

And it’s an episode NOAA believes was ultimately stoked by exceptionally warm ocean waters in the Arctic. In other words, it could be a consequence of climate change, which can make environmental impacts significantly more extreme.

Read the full article at Mashable

Disappearance of Alaska snow crabs means some businesses might disappear, too

October 25, 2022 — Some seven billion snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Experts are still investigating the cause, but rapid warming in the Bering Sea is a likely factor.

Alaska has canceled the snow crab harvesting season for the first time ever, and commercial crabbers and the economies that depend on the species stand to lose millions.

Just a few years ago, Alaska’s snow crab population was booming. Jamie Goen with the industry group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers said businesses were making big investments.

Read the full article at Marketplace

Leading Light Wind picks fisheries liaison team for New York Bight project

October 22, 2022 — Developers of the Leading Light Wind offshore energy project in the New York Bight said Tuesday that they have brought on a new fisheries stakeholder engagement team from Sea Risk Solutions LLC.

Sarah Hudak has joined as fisheries liaison officer, supported by Ron Larsen, managing partner of Sea Risk Solutions, a maritime and fisheries communication consultant. Sea Risk is a maritime risk mitigation and liaison services company that started in 2013 working on subsea cable protection, and now is involved in offshore wind planning.

Leading Light released its new “fisheries communication plan,” a detailed document on how it will work with commercial and recreational fishermen, fisheries managers and others during planning, construction and operations.

Leading Light Wind is a led by project sponsors Invenergy and New York-based energyRe. Planned as a 2,000-plus megawatt capacity at 90 turbine locations, the 84,000-acre federal lease site 40 miles east of Atlantic City, N.J., and 80 miles south of Long Island would be tied into the New York metro energy grid by a 190 kilometer export cable, according to the company.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Study suggests tailoring seafood diets to individual populations

October 20, 2022 — Seafood is more nutritious than terrestrial animal protein and has a lower carbon footprint, according to a study published in September 2022 in the research journal Communications Earth and Environment.

The study, a collaboration between the RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies, and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, provides suggestions for maximizing the nutritional value of seafood consumed around the globe and reducing the industry’s greenhouse gas through concentration on specific species and production methods.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource