Saving Seafood

Rare blue whales spotted 130 miles east of Connecticut

February 27, 2020 — Blue whales have been spotted in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Connecticut shoreline.

This month, researchers from the New England Aquarium surveyed the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, according to a release from the aquarium

Within six hours, the researchers had counted 322 whales and dolphins, including two blue whales.

“As marine mammal researchers, it’s such a thrill to fly in this area and see such a great diversity of animals,” researcher Orla O’Brien said in a release.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association lists blue whales as endangered. The exact population size is not known, but there were only 440 confirmed sightings in the Atlantic Ocean between 1979 and 2009.

Read the full story at the Connecticut Post

A ‘Strange’ New England Coral May Hold Secrets To Combating Climate Change

December 13, 2019 — When we think about animals that inhabit the cold New England ocean, sharks, seals, or lobsters may spring to mind. But there’s another critter lurking in the deep off our coast, and it’s one that may hold valuable secrets that could help its tropical cousins.

And you may not have even known that it’s actually an animal: coral.

“The coral that exists in Connecticut is called Astrangia poculata,” said Sean Grace, a biologist at Southern Connecticut State University. Grace said the name Astrangia captures the surprise scientists felt when they observed this coral centuries ago.

“You can imagine back then, they pulled it up and looked at it and went, ‘Well, that’s a strange thing to see off the coast of New Jersey, the mid-Atlantic,’” Grace said.

Today this species of Astrangia, also known as the “northern star coral,” is dispersed widely. From southern New England, it goes down the Eastern Seaboard into the Gulf of Mexico.

Corals are invertebrates. They’re not plants. They’re definitely not rocks. Instead, corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

Read the full story at Maine Public

New England flounder can offload in three states

December 11, 2019 — A rule change long sought by the southern New England dragger fleet will allow crew to offload their summer flounder catch in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut all in one trip.

The pilot program announced by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries will permit boats to call at ports in all three states during flounder seasons, without the longstanding requirement that they first land their Massachusetts trip limit and then head out for another trip.

Provided boats hold flounder permits in all three states, the reciprocal can let them land three 1,000-pound increments – one in each state – on a single trip. Industry advocates say it will lead to less waste and better safety, particularly during the winter months.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New offshore wind award is largest renewable project ever for CT

December 9, 2019 — In what is the single largest purchase of renewable power ever by the state, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced Thursday it has chosen Vineyard Wind to develop an 804-megawatt offshore wind project.

Once developed, the project will constitute roughly 14% of the state’s power needs.

For those reasons, DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes called the award “historic.”

“It also advances a major step toward Gov. Lamont’s goal of 100 percent zero carbon electricity supply by 2040,” she noted in a call with reporters. “As we address the urgent challenge of climate change, this selection demonstrates Connecticut’s leadership in advancing solutions at the scale that we need to help provide a solution to this global threat.”

The project award came not a moment too soon.

With federal tax credits set to expire at the end of the year, Connecticut and its offshore-wind-loving neighbors have been scrambling to authorize projects and, as such, benefit from the tax break that helps with financing. Congress has extended such tax credits many times, and House Democrats have proposed a five-year extension.

Read the full story at The CT Mirror

New rule allows New Bedford fishermen to stop throwing away fish

December 9, 2019 — A regulatory change long sought by groundfishermen — which will lessen the dangers of working at sea, reduce fuel costs and stabilize fishing stocks — is expected to go into effect Jan. 1 in the Bay State for the start of the winter fluke season, officials said.

The change, which is also expected to be made in Rhode Island and Connecticut, will allow fishermen to make one trip and then return to the three states and offload their catches without going back to sea after every offload, officials and fishermen said. The conditions are that they must have licenses to catch fluke in the states where they offload, and the states must be open for catching fluke.

Currently, fishermen go to sea, come back to a port in Massachusetts and offload their catch, discarding fish that are over their quota. Then they return to sea for a second time, offload a second catch in Rhode Island, if they have a license there, and again discard fish that are over the limit. Finally, they make a third trip to sea, offload their catch in Connecticut, if they have a license there, and again discard any fish beyond their quota.

“We just want to go from state to state and not kill fish unnecessarily. Anyone who thinks fishermen don’t care about fish is wrong,” said Tony Borges, owner and captain of Sao Paulo, an 87-foot dragger out of New Bedford. “We want to catch all the limits (in one fishing trip) and deliver it.

“It is so much better than going out and unload, and going out and unload, and going out and unload, if they (the states) are open (for catching fluke),” he said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Connecticut Picks Offshore-Wind Winner in Bid to Go Carbon-Free

December 6, 2019 — Connecticut agreed to buy power from a huge wind farm planned in the Atlantic Ocean by a joint venture of Avangrid Inc. and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

The venture, Vineyard Wind, will provide the state with 804 megawatts, or about 14% of its power needs. It’s part of Governor Ned Lamont’s push to get to 100% of the state’s electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040, Connecticut officials said in a statement Thursday. The project is forecast to come online in 2025.

U.S. states from Massachusetts to Virginia see massive turbines in the ocean as a way to bring clean power to crowded coastal cities and fight global warming. New York has awarded contacts to build 1.7 gigawatts. New Jersey has a contract for 1.1 gigawatts. Analysts forecast it could grow into a $70 billion industry, revitalizing ports up and down the Atlantic.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

JOE GILBERT: Wind turbine spacing plan inadequate for fishing safety

November 26, 2019 — From the perspective of Connecticut’s commercial fishermen who provide over $53 million to our state’s economy, nearly 1,000 jobs and food on the table of countless consumers, I wanted to respond to the Nov. 19 Day article, “New England Wind Turbine Plan Proposed to Allay Concerns.”

The four developers advancing offshore wind farms off Connecticut’s coast and competing for Connecticut’s energy contracts – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – released their proposal to the U.S. Coast Guard for how to consistently position turbines across the region in a way that they believe will satisfy safety concerns raised by commercial fishermen and other mariners.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” they said in a press release. It “will allow mariners to safely transit from one end of the New England Wind Energy Area (WEA) to the other without unexpected obstacles.”

It is unclear to me and other fishermen what industry requests these developers are responding to. This proposal certainly does not reflect the position of the Connecticut mobile gear fishermen, i.e., trawlers and scallopers. In fact, the report that this proposal is based on does not even identify Connecticut’s port in Stonington as having a scallop fishery at all. Nor does it mention or account for the needs of the New London commercial fishing fleet. With such an omission, how can the report address the needs of Connecticut’s fishermen? By the report’s own admission, the data used for this analysis may only account for as little as 40% of the total fishing vessels that may transit or fish in the WEA.

Read the full story at The Day

MASSACHUSETTES: Cape fishermen celebrate new trawling restrictions

November 26, 2019 — In 2002, when Peter Baker first voiced his opposition to the large herring trawlers towing even larger nets off the beaches of Cape Cod, he didn’t think it would take 17 years to get a ban on what he and others saw as a return to the industrialized fishing that had wiped out New England herring, mackerel and menhaden in the 1970s before the U.S. pushed the foreign fleet 200 miles offshore in 1976.

Last week, the efforts of local fishermen, boards of selectmen, voters, environmental groups and state legislators who spoke out against the midwater trawl herring fishery finally paid off with a federal restriction on large herring vessels fishing within 12 miles of the coast from the Canadian border to Connecticut, and within 20 miles of shore along the Outer Cape coastline south to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.

“This is the culmination of a decade and a half of hard work,” said Baker, who is the director of marine conservation work in New England and Atlantic Canada for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Network could deliver wind power across southern New England

November 25, 2019 — The company that is turning the site of a former coal-burning power plant in Somerset into a green energy center has filed a federal application to develop a single transmission network that could deliver power from offshore wind farms to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Anbaric, a Wakefield-based company that focuses exclusively on transmission, said it filed its application with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for “non-exclusive rights-of-way to develop the Southern New England OceanGrid,” which it described as an “independent, open-access” offshore wind transmission system.

If approved, the company said its plan would be to link existing wind lease areas to one common transmission network and then deliver as much as 16,000 megawatts of clean power to the three southern New England states. The project’s benefits, according to Anbaric, would include greater efficiency, improved reliability, and limited environmental impacts.

“As offshore wind’s potential gains momentum, it’s time to think big and plan rationally. It becomes clearer every day that transmission must lead the way towards greater scale, reliability, and efficiency, just as it has in Europe,” Anbaric CEO Edward Krapels said. “Individual wind farm developers have gotten the industry off to a good start, but we now need a networked grid to minimize conflict and create a truly reliable offshore transmission system that will substantially de-risk wind projects.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Vineyard Wind Appoints Fisheries Liaison For CT

October 29, 2019 — Offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind has appointed Caela Howard its fisheries liaison for Connecticut.

Howard has spent the last decade working closely with fisheries in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and in this role, she will serve as the primary point of contact for fishing industry representatives in Connecticut. She will report to the company’s lead fisheries liaison, Crista Bank.

“Vineyard Wind is excited to welcome Caela Howard as our first Connecticut fisheries liaison,” states Lars Pedersen, CEO of Vineyard Wind. “Caela brings extensive experience working closely with fishermen across southern New England, and we look forward to the insight she will provide as we continue building strong relationships with fishing communities throughout the region.”

Read the full story at North American Wind Power