Saving Seafood

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

Connecticut, Rhode Island vie for roles in emerging offshore wind industry

September 11, 2019 — While each state wants to be the hub offshore wind, experts say there should be plenty of opportunity for both to succeed.

When Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed legislation last June authorizing up to 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind development, the new law signaled big ambitions.

“Connecticut should be the central hub of the offshore wind industry in New England,” Lamont proclaimed at the time.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo made a similar statement about two weeks later when a major British wind turbine maintenance company announced it would set up its U.S. headquarters there.

“As this industry continues to grow,” Raimondo said, “we will keep working to ensure Rhode Island remains the economic epicenter of offshore wind in the United States.”

Read the full story at Energy Central

5 East Coast governors push feds on offshore wind power

August 29, 2019 — The governors of five East Coast states are urging federal regulators not to put any additional roadblocks in the way of the country’s nascent offshore wind industry.

The governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia said in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that offshore wind power will help strengthen America’s energy independence while creating thousands of jobs.

The group, including Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, said they’re disappointed by a recent decision to delay final permitting of the planned 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Connecticut offshore wind may face some rough seas

August 27, 2019 — As Connecticut races to get its first offshore wind projects on track for construction, a collision of factors appear to be working against them.

To start with, the timing couldn’t be worse.

The state and its offshore-wind-loving neighbors all face a year-end expiration of a federal tax credit that helps finance these projects – the first major attempts in the U.S. But in Connecticut some problems – including at least one self-inflicted one – could mean forgoing that money.

Most critical are two issues. The first is the controversy at the Connecticut Port Authority (CPA), which has placed the quasi-public agency under audit and so far sent three people to the exits. The CPA runs the state-owned Pier in New London – now angling to be the premier staging area for offshore wind construction in the state, if not the region.

Read the full story at the Hartford Business Journal

Connecticut Seeks Up To 2 GW Of Offshore Wind

August 21, 2019 — Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has released a request for proposals (RFP) seeking up to 2 GW of offshore wind energy.

The RFP is required under Public Act 19-71, An Act Concerning the Procurement of Energy Derived from Offshore Wind, signed by Gov. Ned Lamont, D-Conn., in June. DEEP sought comments from stakeholders on a draft of the RFP in July.

As part of the RFP process, DEEP commissioner Katie Dykes convened a Commission on Environmental Standards to provide input on best practices for avoiding, minimizing and mitigating any impacts to wildlife, natural resources, ecosystems and traditional or existing water-dependent uses, such as commercial fishing. The commission held a series of meetings over the course of two months and released a report on Aug. 7 that provided recommendations to DEEP.

Read the full story at North American Wind Power

Humans Altered the Genetic Make-up of a Species Through Fishing

August 5, 2019 — Over recent decades, many commercially harvested fish have grown slower and matured earlier, which can translate into lower yields. Scientists have long suspected that rapid evolutionary change in fish caused by intense harvest pressure is the culprit.

Now, for the first time, researchers have unraveled genome-wide changes that prompted by fisheries – changes that previously had been invisible, according to a study published in Science by a team of researchers including Hannes Baumann, UConn assistant professor of Marine Sciences, who collaborated with researchers at Cornell University, the University of Oregon, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and Stanford University.

In unprecedented detail, the study shows sweeping genetic changes and how quickly those changes occur in fish populations extensively harvested by humans, says Baumann.

Read the full story at UConn Today

Climate Change and its Effect on Our Coastal Ecosystem

July 16, 2019 — Climate change and rapidly warming water mean a major impact on our coastal ecosystem.

The North Atlantic shelf, which includes our Connecticut shoreline and extends all the way up to the coastal waters of Canada, is warming faster 99 percent faster than our global oceans. Scientists are concerned for what the future holds.

“There’s a lot of concern about what climate change can do. The Gulf of Maine which is an incredibly productive body of water which includes Cape Cod and parts North is warming at an alarming rate. And it will be interesting to see how that changes the distribution of both the predator and prey,” said Dr. Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

In the case of great white sharks, climate change will likely affect the prey before the predator.

Read the full story at NBC Connecticut