Saving Seafood

Biden may return seamount protections

June 21, 2021 — A couple years ago, the fight over the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was all the rage.

The monument, created in 2016 by President Barack Obama, preserved about 3.2 million acres southeast of Cape Ann and about 130 miles off Cape Cod from commercial activities of all manner — including fishing. Lobster and crab harvesters were being phased out over seven years. It protected three underwater canyons, four seamounts and the surrounding resources and ecosystems.

Obama’s presidential successor, Donald Trump, did his best to gut the monument’s designation and protections during his term.

Last year, Trump reopened the area to commercial fishing and removed most of the monument’s protections. The fishing industry was ecstatic. Environmentalists were aghast. The fish had no comment.

And now the battle is rejoined.

The Biden administration, according to several reports last week, is moving in the direction of reinstating full protections to the Canyon and Seamounts and two other land-based national monuments in Utah.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland “recommended in a confidential report that President Biden restore full protection for the three national monuments” diminished by Trump.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MAINE: U.S. Interior Secretary to visit Acadia National Park on Friday

June 17, 2021 — U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will visit Maine on Friday to talk with state and tribal leaders about the Biden administration’s support for public lands.

Haaland will join Gov. Janet Mills and all four members of Maine’s Congressional delegation at Schoodic Point, a smaller and lesser-known part of Acadia National Park located on a peninsula in eastern Hancock County.

The visit kicks off with a special sunrise musical performance by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and several Wabanaki musicians at 4:05 a.m. That event is by invitation only.

Haaland is the first Biden administration Cabinet member to visit Maine.

Haaland’s approach is likely to be radically different from that of Ryan Zinke or David Bernhardt, her predecessors under former President Donald Trump. The Washington Post reported this week that Haaland has recommended restoring protections to three national monuments that had been rolled back by Trump. They are Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of Massachusetts.

There had been some concern in 2017 that Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument also might be targeted for a reduction in size, but that never happened.

Read the full story at Central Maine

Feds Add NY-NJ Waters to Gulf of Mexico in Offshore Wind Development Spurt

June 15, 2021 — In the latest Biden administration push to meet its target to deploy 30 GW of U.S. offshore wind energy by 2030, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that her agency jumpstarted the process announced in March to lease federal ocean tracts for projects in the New York Bight area between Long Island, N.Y., and coastal New Jersey.

The preliminary lease notice, published on June 14, follows a US Interior Dept. alert on June 11 that it will also open Gulf of Mexico areas for project development, seeking builder interest and public comment.

The government notice for the New York lease, which foresees up to 7 GW of offshore wind in three designated zones, launches a 60-day comment period, with specifics on lease proposal dates and exact lease sites to follow. Most observers speculate the lease auction will be held this year.

Currently, 11 developers have indicated interest in building projects in those areas and are approved to bid by Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency said. It said the areas could provide more than 9.8 GW of developable power supply.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which represents fishing interests and has been a vocal project opponent, noted developer mandates to consult on potential impacts before turbine array designs are proposed. But in a statement, she remains  concerned about opening new lease areas in the Bight, “which is perhaps the most spatially conflicted area in the country.”

Read the full story at the Engineering News Record

Haaland recommends reimposing fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

June 14, 2021 — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has recommended in a confidential report that President Biden restore full protections to three national monuments diminished by President Donald Trump, including Utah’s Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and a huge marine reserve off New England. The move, described by two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was not yet public, would preserve about 5 million acres of federal land and water.

A broad coalition of conservationists, scientists and tribal activists has urged Biden to expand the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which were established by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, respectively, to their original boundaries. Trump cut Bears Ears by nearly 85 percent, and Grand Staircase-Escalante almost in half, in December 2017. A year ago, he permitted commercial fishing on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which removed most of the monument’s protections.

The White House is still deliberating, according to these people, but Biden favors the idea of overturning Trump’s actions. Employing the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad latitude to protect threatened land and water, ranks as one of the easiest ways for Biden to conserve areas unilaterally.

All three areas have been embroiled in legal fights for years. Fishing operators challenged Obama’s 2016 decision to restrict commercial activities for 4,913 square miles off Cape Cod, Mass., which banned seabed mining and some fishing activities immediately while giving lobster and red crab operators seven years to stop fishing there. The region is home to many species of deep-sea coral, sharks, sea turtles, seabirds and deep-diving marine mammals, as well as massive underground canyons and seamounts that rise as high as 7,700 feet from the ocean floor.

“This area is very important to us,” Jim Budi, an official with the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters, said in an interview. He added that his members brought in about 25 percent of their annual catch from the region last summer after Trump lifted commercial fishing restrictions. They’ve sustainably caught swordfish by staying below limits set by federal regulators, he said.

Reviving the Obama-era limits, Budi said, “doesn’t do any conservation good, whatsoever.”

Still, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. gave some conservatives hope three months ago when he sharply criticized the expanse of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Noting that the law was initially aimed at protecting Pueblo artifacts in the Southwest, he said the accompanying protected land must “be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

“A statute permitting the President in his sole discretion to designate as monuments ‘landmarks,’ ‘structures,’ and ‘objects’ — along with the smallest area of land compatible with their management — has been transformed into a power without any discernible limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea,” Roberts wrote, as the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower court decision on the monument. “The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument at issue in this case demonstrates how far we have come from indigenous pottery.”

Atlantic Red Crab Company owner Jon Williams, who has intervened in an ongoing lawsuit to defend Trump’s changes to the monument, said he wouldn’t hesitate to challenge the administration should it reimpose restrictions there.

“I’m already standing by,” he said. “And we’ve already been given a road map to the Supreme Court.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Feds propose leasing effort offshore commercial wind between New Jersey, New York

June 14, 2021 — The federal government wants to lease land in shallow water between Long Island and the New Jersey coast for offshore commercial wind energy development and the creation of union jobs.

The feds say the land, located on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the New York Bight, could enable more than 7 gigawatts of offshore wind energy and power more than 2.6 million homes. In addition, officials said the plan would support President Joe Biden’s goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

The proposed “competitive lease sale” includes a 60-day public comment period, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is seeking feedback on several mandates tied to the sale, including the requirement “to create good-paying union jobs and engage with all stakeholders and ocean users,” according to a news release.

The “announcement of new proposed lease stipulations puts a priority on creating and sustaining good-paying union jobs as we build a clean energy economy,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a news release, saying that climate change “poses an existential threat.”

Read the full story at The Center Square

BOEM to offer New York Bight wind leases; scallop fishermen urge delay

June 14, 2021 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will offer eight new offshore wind lease areas in the New York Bight, potentially opening up to 627,000 acres for energy development between New Jersey and Long Island.

With a potential for more than 7 gigawatts of generation, the lease areas are touted by the Biden administration as a new economic engine for the region ¬– with and explicit promise by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to put “a priority on creating and sustaining good-paying union jobs as we build a clean energy economy.”

Northeast state governors and lawmakers have pushed offshore wind development as a new industry that will benefit their political allies in organized labor, and that theme is front and center in the administration’s new “all-of-government” push.

The announcement Friday brought immediate pushback from commercial fishermen in the scallop industry, one of the nation’s richest and most successful fleets, urging BOEM to delay leasing and adjust the proposed areas to preserve important shellfish habitat.

The agency should “shift the boundaries of the Hudson South area just five miles, so BOEM can better ensure that critical scallop populations will be unaffected, while not diminishing the potential for wind power in the area,” according to the Fisheries Survival Fund, an advocacy group for the East Coast scallop industry.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

For Lease: Windmill Space in the Atlantic Between Long Island and New Jersey

June 11, 2021 — The Biden administration on Friday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to develop offshore wind farms in shallow waters between Long Island and New Jersey as part of its push to transition the nation to renewable energy.

The proposed sale, the first of the Biden administration, includes eight lease areas in the New York Bight, a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean between Cape May in New Jersey and Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. Administration officials estimated wind turbines there could generate more than seven gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2.6 million homes.

The move is part of efforts by the Biden administration to jump-start the country’s offshore wind sector. Last month, it gave final approval to the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and said it would open California’s coast to wind farms. Earlier this week, the administration said it was examining whether to bring wind farms to the Gulf of Mexico. President Biden has set a goal of generating 30,000 megawatts of electricity from offshore wind nationwide by 2030.

That contrasts sharply with former President Donald J. Trump, who disparaged wind turbines, claiming that they destroyed property values, caused cancer and killed birds. His administration favored the development of fossil fuels and disputed the scientific consensus that the emissions produced by the burning of oil, gas and coal are driving climate change.

Read the full story at The New York Times

U.S. explores wind energy potential in Gulf of Mexico

June 9, 2021 — The Biden administration on Tuesday said it will explore the potential of offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico, part of its goal to supercharge growth in clean energy over the next decade.

“This is an important first step to see what role the Gulf may play in this exciting frontier,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

While the Gulf of Mexico is a major hub for offshore oil and gas production, it has had little renewable energy development. President Joe Biden has made the expansion of clean energy, especially offshore wind, a cornerstone of his fight against climate change.

Biden faces criticism in Gulf Coast states after putting a pause on federal drilling auctions. States including Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama sued in March to restore the sales, which are on hold pending a government review.

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will publish a Request for Interest (RFI) on June 11 to see if there is any interest in offshore wind development in the Outer Continental Shelf.

Read the full story at Reuters

Interior Dept. gauging interest in Gulf of Mexico wind power

June 9, 2021 — President Joe Biden’s administration wants to know whether offshore wind companies want to move into the Gulf of Mexico.

The agency that oversees offshore leases will publish a request for interest Friday in the Federal Register, for areas off Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama, the Interior Department said Tuesday.

Those areas are largely in shallower waters where many wells have played out rather than the deep seas where the Gulf’s offshore oil and gas industry is now focused.

Biden has said he wants enough wind-generated electricity for more than 10 million homes nationwide by 2030.

Offshore wind development has the potential to create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

Her agency’s request for interest from developers “is an important first step to see what role the Gulf may play in this exciting frontier,” she said.

“The Gulf of Mexico is extremely well-positioned for the exploration of new offshore technologies and energy opportunities,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which includes companies building both wind and oil and gas facilities offshore.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Offshore wind pushes West without fisheries input, stakeholders say

May 27, 2021 — The Interior Department announced on Tuesday, May 25, that two areas off the California coast would be targeted for wind energy projects, including a nearly 400-square-mile wind farm in Morro Bay.

“The offshore wind industry has the potential to create tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs across the nation, while combating the negative effects of climate change,” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a press release.

Commercial fishermen on both coasts continue to be concerned about what the federal push for offshore wind projects means for their jobs. Fishing groups say their feedback has largely been ignored.

“The fishing industry has been told these areas work best for offshore wind developers; but no one has asked us what areas would work best for us,” said Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, in a statement released on Tuesday.

Read the full story at National Fisherman