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DELAWARE: DNREC Sinks Ex-Military Freighter for Artificial Reef

August 17, 2020 — The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has another vessel in its artificial reef.

On Thursday, the agency sunk the Reedville, originally a World War II and Korean Conflict-era coastal freighter. The supply ship is part of DNREC’s artificial reef 16 miles offshore and 87 feet deep. The reef also includes decommissioned ferries and the “Perfect Storm” ship, the Zuni-Tamaroa. DNREC says the artificial reef helps the local fish habitat and has become a popular angling destination.

“We continue to enhance the angling and recreational diving experience in Delaware by expanding our reef system, which includes 14 separate reef sites in the Delaware Bay and along the Atlantic Coast,” said DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin. “When we sank Twin Capes two years ago as a centerpiece of the system, it was unmatched as an artificial reef for both providing fish habitat and a spectacular dive with its five decks for underwater exploration. Now with the Reedville, we’ve got four reefed vessels of the same class and we are putting it in a place that will be accessible, attract the most fish and where divers will want to explore, too.”

Read the full story at WBOC

Army-Navy freighter added to artificial reef off the Delaware coast.

August 14, 2020 — DNREC continued to bolster Delaware’s artificial reef system today by sinking the Reedville, originally a coastal freighter and supply ship, at a reef site 16 miles offshore.

The Reedville was converted to a commercial fishing vessel after military decommissioning and today found another new life as fish habitat and diving attract through DNREC’s artificial reef program.

The sinking of the 180-foot long Reedville was the reef program’s first deployment of a vessel since a retired Chesapeake Bay cruise ship was sunk late last year.

It came after the nationally-publicized and viral-videoed 2018 sinking of the retired Cape May-Lewes ferry Twin Capes onto the Del-Jersey-Land Reef, second only to Reef Site No. 11 as a popular fishing destination.

Because of the ship’s profile featuring a cavernous hold, the Reedville is expected to be a boon to two fish prominent in Delaware inshore waters, black sea bass and tautog. The area where vessels have been sunk does not have suitable habitat for some species.

Read the full story at Delaware Business Now

Summer flounder: good news on quota, but waiting for restaurants’ return

July 7, 2020 — The $25.2 million East Coast market for summer flounder — although a reliable bread-and-butter fish — has faced ups and downs in quotas over the years.

The 2020 commercial quota is 11.53 million pounds, while the recreational harvest limit is 7.69 million pounds. The highest percent of commercial allocation goes to Virginia (21.32 percent) and North Carolina (27.44 percent) while Delaware, Maine and New Hampshire have the smallest allocations.

Anecdotally, in the last few years, the price per pound for jumbo summer flounder (4 pounds or larger) decreased, with some vessels getting around 50 cents less per pound for jumbos compared to smaller sizes. As market conditions have shifted relative to quotas over the past few years, there is some speculation that markets prefer smaller product that fits better on a plate.

Now 2020 is the first full year with higher quotas for the fishery — but with the covid-19 crisis and its impact on markets globally, it remains to be seen if quotas will be fully utilized.

“It’s going to be very hard to predict summer flounder landings for 2020 at this point. Last year, the quotas were revised upward by about 50 percent, based on the new stock assessment, but that change wasn’t implemented until midyear,” says Kiley Dancy of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Federal funds earmarked for Maryland, Virginia, Delaware fisheries hurt by coronavirus

May 15, 2020 — About $10 million in federal funding has been set aside to assist Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware fisheries hurt by the novel coronavirus.

Virginia fisheries are set to receive $4.5 million, Maryland fisheries will receive $4.1 million and Delaware fisheries will receive $1 million, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division.

Specifically, these funds will help address direct or indirect fishery-related losses as well as negative impacts to subsistence, cultural or ceremonial fishing caused by COVID-19, according to NOAA.

Fishery participants eligible for funding will be able to work with their state marine fisheries management agencies, territories or tribes to apply for these funds. In order to obtain funds, a business must have experienced a revenue loss greater than 35 percent of its prior 5-year average or experienced any negative impacts to subsistence, cultural or ceremonial fisheries

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

Delaware wind farm timeline delayed by one year

May 5, 2020 — A wind farm set to be built off Delaware’s coast should now be completed one year later than originally planned.

The company, Ørsted, says the turbines will now be built by the end of 2023 instead of 2022. Officials tell 47 ABC that Ørsted is receiving its “federal Notice of Intent” for the Skipjack Wind Farm later than originally anticipated. In a statement they say, “Ørsted remains firmly committed to working with our federal partners to complete Skipjack and provide clean, reliable offshore wind energy to 35,000 homes in the Delmarva region.”

According to Ørsted, “a Notice of Intent is a communication issued by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) during the federal permitting process announcing its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) submitted by Skipjack Offshore Wind, LLC.”

Read the full story at WMDT

Commercial fishermen struggling to sell seafood amid restaurant closures

April 28, 2020 — Restaurant closures due to the coronavirus pandemic continue to cause a major disruption in the seafood supply industry – and as a result, some commercial fishermen have turned to new ways to sell their catch.

“Everything is just being devastated because of the coronavirus,” said Wes Townsend, a full-time commercial fisherman in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Townsend has been fishing for about 44 years.

“Black sea bass is the main thing that we have. We also do lobster, certain times of the year we do rock fishing,” Townsend said.

This season, though, he’s catching a lot less — and not because of a lack of fish.

“This year, with the coronavirus, we have actually had buyers tell us, ‘Don’t go, we do not want your fish. We have no markets,’” Townsend added.

It’s something he said he’d never experienced before.

“We have never had the buyers tell us don’t go,” Townsend said.

With most restaurants closing their doors, the seafood supply industry has been suffering.

According to the most recent data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than two-thirds of seafood has been served at restaurants.

Read the full story at Fox News

With little business, Delaware fishermen just hoping they can survive

April 17, 2020 — Brian Hoffecker almost didn’t make it through the first year he ventured off on his own as a commercial fisherman.

It was the mid-1990s and he owed a lot of money on the boat he had just bought when a historic winter storm hit his prey – Delmarva’s iconic blue crabs – hard.

“When it was time to go crabbing, I was broke,” he said. “It was brutally cold and it killed most of the crabs. There weren’t any crabs to catch.”

After more than two decades making a living on the water, the impacts of the coronavirus, Hoffecker’s livelihood is threatened once again.

Read the full story at the Delaware News Journal

JIM LOVGREN: Whats The Big Rush To Offshore Wind?

February 11, 2020 — The U.S. is currently in a mad rush to build offshore wind farms on every square inch of the ocean on the east coast, despite the fact that there is presently little known about the environmental effects of so many structures on the marine ecosystem. The surveying, construction, operation and maintenance of these huge, up to 900 foot tall structures, will create a cacophony of sound never before heard in these ocean waters. While the surveying and construction phase is supposed to be of short duration, consisting of sonic and seismic testing to explore the ocean bottom, and piledriving the windmill bases into the sea floor, because more and more projects are being proposed almost everyday, it’s not unreasonable to assume that this noise will be present for the next 25 years at least. What will the cumulative effect of all this noise, [some of it loud enough to kill creatures] be over the course of decades? It’s seems no one cares. So, to save the planet we must kill the planet.

We are told the world will end in twelve years if we don’t immediately stop burning fossil fuels, and change over to a green economy. This is absolute nonsense. I won’t dispute that we need to seriously slow down mankind’s carbon emissions, but anybody that thinks that the USA can solve this problem by itself is delusional. The USA has reduced carbon emissions by over ten % in the last decade while China and India have increased over one hundred % each in that time. The Asian continent is now responsible for half of the worlds green house gas emissions, and that figure is continuing to climb as China keeps building more coal burning power plants, not only for themselves but other countries as well. In a few years China will emit twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as the USA, which is presently the second larger contributor. As the older industrialized nations work towards a cleaner energy future, the developing world, particularly in Asia and the Pacific basin are neutralizing any efforts to clean the atmosphere by utilizing the cheapest energy they can use, which is fossil fuels.

So, why must we ignore all semblances of concern to the possible effects of thousands of huge off shore wind turbines on the marine environment? Right now leases have been granted that cover fully one third of the ocean bottom from Nantucket to Delaware in water out to forty fathoms, leaving only the coastline out to seventeen miles, and the shipping lanes, clear of them. These wind turbines must be sighted at least three quarters of a mile apart, meaning that vast tracks of the ocean will be covered by them. Hundreds of square miles. Most of them sited in the middle of long time historical fishing grounds. What about the fishermen that fish there? Tough luck, they will not be able to. In Europe, of the five country’s that have offshore wind farms, only the U.K. allows fishing in them, it is just too dangerous for commercial operations to operate amongst them. As for those lucky U.K. fishermen they can fish there, but unfortunately the Cod they used to catch there all left. Of course because the farms were rushed into construction and operation, no one thought to do a baseline study of the marine ecosystem so they could scientifically document any changes to marine life that might have occurred due to construction and operation of the windfarms. The windmill companies can continue to claim no harm, because they obstruct any attempt to document effects to the marine ecosystem.

Read the full story at Fishery Nation

ERIC BURNLEY: Commercial fishermen do not affect recreational fishing

February 3, 2020 — There is a misconception among some recreational fishermen that commercial fishermen are to blame for all the ills we suffer with a lack of flounder, bluefish, trout, striped bass, or (you name it) . Sorry, Charlie, it just ain’t so.

There was a time when both commercial and recreational fishermen could take as many fish of any size as they wanted, and we did. I have seen coolers full of flounder come off the Point at Cape Hatteras with many of those fish well below 12 inches. Blues stacked up like cordwood at Indian River when the run was on, and trout deck loaded in Delaware Bay. At the same time, commercial fishermen were filling their nets with the same fish until the market value dropped to the point where it became a losing proposition to go after them.

I was a small part of the movement to put limits on both recreational and commercial fishermen here in Delaware and in Virginia. In Delaware, I was on the Delaware Wildlife Federation’s Advisory Council, and we met regularly with state officials to try to bring some order to the fishery. The late Buddy Hurlock and his wife Rose were the driving force behind this movement.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette

Report says 4 of 6 Chesapeake Bay states cut funding, staff for top agencies handling pollution

December 6, 2019 — Four of 6 states in the Chesapeake Bay region cut funding or staff to their main pollution control agency over the last 10 years, says a report released today by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Environmental agencies in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York each saw budget reductions, even after adjustments for inflation, between 2008 and 2018, according to the report, The Thin Green Line: Cuts in State Pollution Control Agencies Threaten Public Health. Those states, as well as Maryland, also reduced their environmental workforce during the same time period.

The report was especially critical of Pennsylvania legislators and governors for cutting funding by 16% and staffing by 15%, even as state spending overall grew by 18%.

Among the 48 states studied, 30 cut funding to the operating budgets of agencies that protect public health and the environment.

Both Delaware and New York were in the top 10 states with the largest cuts. Delaware cut funding to its Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control by 33% and staffing by 21% over the decade. New York cut the Department of Environmental Conservation by 31% and staffing by 29%.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

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