Saving Seafood

Additional Offshore Wind Lawsuit Reflects LBI Opposition Concerns

February 11, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior is facing another legal challenge to its handling of offshore wind, this time for its approval of an offshore wind project to be constructed on a 65,000-acre tract in federal waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. The suit comes three weeks after a grassroots organization from Long Beach Island made good on its intention to sue the federal agency.

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, filed suit Jan. 31 in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

“In its haste to implement a massive new program to generate electrical energy by constructing thousands of turbine towers offshore the eastern seaboard on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf and laying hundreds of miles of high-tension electrical cables undersea, the United States has shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries and its people,” said Annie Hawkins, executive director of the alliance. “The fishing industry supports strong action on climate change, but not at the expense of the ocean, its inhabitants and sustainable domestic seafood.”

Read the full story at TheSandPaper.net

 

The Anacostia River Is Mussel-ing Its Way To Clean Waters

August 28, 2018 — If you’ve got 5,600 freshwater mussels, you could serve about 280 steaming plates of moules marinières. Or, you could deposit the bivalves in the Anacostia River.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has opted for the latter as part of a larger effort to clean the river and renew the mussel population. Last week, staffers and volunteers with the nonprofit placed the creatures in 28 floating baskets at seven sites along the Anacostia River—six in D.C., and one in Maryland—with varying microhabitat conditions.

Jorge Bogantes Montero, the organization’s natural resources specialist, has already checked on one of the baskets, all of which have swimming pool noodles to keep them afloat and covered tops to protect the mussels from predators.

“They look great,” he says of the mussels in the baskets by the Anacostia Watershed Society’s floating office on Water Street SE.

How does he know? He peeked into the baskets and saw mussels with two little holes, which he calls an innie and an outie (one of which is filtering water and the other is secreting waste). “I could see pairs of holes all over the bottom, so I know they are working,” says Montero. “If you see slits open, that’d be a bad sign.” The next checkup will happen in late September, about a month after their deployment.

Much like oysters, mussels can filter large quantities of water (between 10-20 gallons daily) and they eat bacteria like E. coli. But that’s just one of their benefits to the ecosystem, says Montero. “They are providing a lot of ecosystem services even beyond filtration,” he says, like depositing sediment at the bottom of the river. Other critters also use their shells as places for shelter or nesting.

Read the full story at DCist

Chesapeake Bay Nothing Like Caribbean

February 14, 2016 — In his letter, “Menhaden are critical for bay restoration,” Tscharner D. Watkins III begins with a protracted discussion of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem before resorting to hyperbole. Referring to the menhaden, he states “these filter feeders kept our waters clear, much like the waters in the Caribbean.”

The Chesapeake Bay is a tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean — which is also fed by more than 150 streams and rivers within its watershed, emanating from six states and the District of Columbia. Thus it contains the same saline waters of the Atlantic, but has not borne within the past (nor does it continue to bear) any resemblance to the more pristine waters of the Caribbean Sea.

The marine dead zones are hypoxic waters which are so depleted of oxygen that they are unable to support life, resulting oftentimes in massive fish kills. The oxygen-robbing algal blooms which are symptomatic of the hypoxia are caused by the problematic runoff of residential, agricultural and industrial effluent throughout the watershed. Therefore, the menhaden are ill-affected by the disruption in the marine food chain, but should not necessarily be regarded as the root cause of the hypoxia.

Read the full letter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Scientists worry that the Chesapeake’s natural shoreline is turning into a wall

December 26, 2015 — On the banks of the Potomac River, construction cranes that look like metal dinosaurs tower over Southwest Washington. They swivel in all directions, delivering concrete and other heavy material to workers building a large development behind a steel-and-concrete wall that holds back the water.

Within two years, the Wharf will begin emerging as a playground of trendy apartments, shops and entertainment venues. But below the river’s surface, animals that depend on vegetation in the water may continue to struggle, marine scientists say.

The Wharf is part of the great wall of the Chesapeake Bay. Because of development along the bay and its rivers, vast swaths of soft shorelines have been turned into stone. The spread of what scientists call “the armored shore” is depriving young fish, crabs and other organisms of food and shelter. And it is yet another reason why life in the bay is disappearing, according to new research funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Houses, offices, bike paths, marinas — and walls built to protect them from erosion and rising sea levels — are replacing marshy shores, uprooting plants that young fish, crabs and other organisms use for food.

Read the full story at The Washington Post