Saving Seafood

Trump adviser involved in Vineyard Wind opposition

August 30, 2021 — The two Nantucket women said they were suing the federal government because they wanted to save the North Atlantic right whale from offshore wind. Then a former member of President Trump’s EPA transition team stepped to the microphone to commend them for their bravery.

“They did it voluntarily,” David Stevenson, the former Trump adviser, said of the women. “They’re not getting anything out of this other than trying to save the whales, save Nantucket.”

So went a press conference outside the Massachusetts State House yesterday, where offshore wind critics announced a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s approval of Vineyard Wind, the first major offshore wind project in America to be issued an environmental permit.

The lawsuit marks a new chapter in a decadeslong push to build offshore wind farms in America. Cape Wind, the first offshore wind project proposed in the U.S. waters, was sunk by nearly two decades of legal battles. Now, the question is whether they will sink a second generation of projects.

Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine project 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, is the first to run the legal gauntlet. The $2.8 billion project is the only utility-scale offshore wind project to receive a final permit from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Other projects could soon follow. BOEM, as the bureau is known, has committed to reviewing 16 others along the Eastern Seaboard by the end of President Biden’s first term.

The lawsuit filed by Nantucket Residents Against Turbines in the U.S. District Court District of Massachusetts argues that the bureau failed to consider the impact of Vineyard Wind on right whales. It seeks to vacate the permit.

It’s not the first time opponents have challenged BOEM’s review of Vineyard Wind. That distinction belongs to a small-scale solar developer who owns a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard (Climatewire, July 20).

Read the full story at E&E News

US West Coast fishing industry requests review of sea otter reintroduction

August 16, 2021 — Major players in the U.S. West Coast fishing industry sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on Thursday, 12 August, requesting a thorough review of how a proposed sea otter reintroduction might affect the region’s fisheries and coastal economies.

A bill signed last year by former U.S. President Donald Trump gave USFWS until the end of 2021 to assess the impact a West Coast sea otter reintroduction might have on the region.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bernhardt: Trump tried to boost offshore wind, not kill it

July 22, 2021 — Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt defended the Trump administration’s lengthy review of America’s first offshore wind farm in an interview yesterday, saying the additional environmental analysis he ordered was intended to strengthen the project against legal challenges rather than kill it.

The Trump administration had initially planned to complete a review of Vineyard Wind in the summer of 2019. But Bernhardt surprised the project’s developers, who proposed a $2.8 billion wind farm near Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., by expanding a government study of the project to consider other wind farms proposed along the East Coast.

The announcement cast a pall over the wind industry. It slowed planning work on other projects and raised questions about the viability of offshore wind in the United States. Many industry supporters suspected the move was a reflection of former President Trump’s disdain for wind power, which he regularly lambasted as an eyesore and a danger to birds. Trump erroneously claimed wind turbines could cause cancer.

But in a phone interview yesterday while vacationing at a North Carolina beach, Bernhardt said it was “fundamentally false” that the administration was playing politics with Vineyard Wind. Instead, he said his call for more analysis was driven by the growing number of wind projects proposed along the East Coast and by divisions among federal agencies over Vineyard Wind’s potential impact on commercial fishing and marine navigation.

“You can’t proceed with federal agencies warring with each other,” he said. “I was like, ‘Look, we don’t have our ducks in a row.’”

He added, “The last thing we wanted to do is put out a finalized program that wasn’t legally sustainable.”

Read the full story at E&E News

US Interior Department reverses legal opinion on offshore wind

April 16, 2021 — The U.S. Interior Department formally reversed a Trump-era legal opinion on offshore wind energy, in another step toward the Biden administration’s goal of dramatically expanding the industry in U.S. waters.

A memo from Robert Anderson, the department’s principle deputy solicitor, released on 9 April critiques and reverses findings written in December by Daniel Jorjani, who was the department’s top lawyer when then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt moved to shut down the approval process for the Vineyard Wind offshore project.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Suit seeks to reverse Trump changes to sea turtle protection

April 7, 2021 — Conservation groups sued on Tuesday to reverse changes made under former President Donald Trump to rules protecting sea turtles, even though federal regulators said a week ago that they were reconsidering some of those changes.

The groups hope President Joe Biden’s administration will change the rules, but the possible revisions outlined recently may not go far enough, said Jaclyn Lopez of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three groups.

“We’re hopeful they will do something and do something soon, but we’re not going to sit back and wait,” she said. “This is decades in the making and our patience has run out.”

“We are aware of this filing and are reviewing it,” Allison Garrett, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service, said in an email.

The current rule would hurt five endangered and threatened sea turtle species, especially Kemp’s ridleys, the smallest and most endangered, the groups’ news release said. Kemp’s ridleys swim throughout the Gulf and along the Atlantic Coast to New England, nesting in Mexico and along the Texas coast.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

East Coast Fishermen Call for Fair Monument Policy From Biden Administration

March 19, 2021 — Over a dozen representatives of the New England and Mid-Atlantic seafood industry met with members of the Department of Interior and NOAA Fisheries officials, including Sam Rauch, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs last Friday to hear their case for a fair and science-based marine monument policy.

East Coast industry members specifically asked to allow commercial fishing in areas within the monument as stated in an Executive Order from last June. That order, issued by the Trump Administration, was an amendement to the Obama Executive Order that created the monument on the basis of the Antiquities Act. President Obama’s proclamation prohibited commercial fishing, with a phase-out period for American lobster and red crab fisheries, within the monument’s boundaries.

President Biden asked the Secretary of the Interior to “… conduct a review of the monument boundaries and conditions that were established by … Proclamation 10049 of June 5, 2020 (Modifying the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument), to determine whether restoration of the monument boundaries and conditions that existed as of January 20, 2017, would be appropriate.”

Industry members raised concerns about creating marine monuments without input from the regional councils, without a basis of the best scientific advice available, and when the final economic and social impacts on the area’s communities would be negative.

They noted that allowing fishing in the Atlantic monument area is consistent with the Biden Administration’s goals of following the best available science, as well as its commitment to economic and environmental justice.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Huawei Pivots to Fish Farms, Mining After U.S. Blocks Its Phones

March 15, 2021 — Six months after the Trump administration dealt a crushing blow to Huawei Technologies Co.’s smartphone business, the Chinese telecommunications giant is turning to less glamorous alternatives that may eventually offset the decline of its biggest revenue contributor.

Among its newest customers is a fish farm in eastern China that’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park. The farm is covered with tens of thousands of solar panels outfitted with Huawei’s inverters to shield its fish from excessive sunlight while generating power. About 370 miles to the west in coal-rich Shanxi province, wireless sensors and cameras deep beneath the earth monitor oxygen levels and potential machine malfunctions in mine pit — all supplied by the tech titan. And next month, a shiny new electric car featuring its lidar sensor will debut at China’s largest auto show.

Once the world’s largest smartphone maker, the Chinese corporation has seen a series of U.S. sanctions almost obliterate its lucrative consumer business. With the Biden administration keeping up the pressure on Huawei, billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei has directed the company to grow its roster of enterprise clients in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and other industries. Huawei is the world’s leading supplier of inverters and it’s now banking on growing those sales alongside its cloud services and data analytics solutions to help the 190,000-employee business survive.

Read the full story at Bloomberg News

MAINE: Lobstermen fear new rules as Biden revokes Trump executive orders on regulation

February 18, 2021 — New executive orders are flying off President Joe Biden’s desk.

Many of those orders seek to reinstate regulations lifted by former President Donald Trump or enact new ones.

Mainers who make a living on the water are particularly concerned about new regulations, and Maine’s Congressional delegation is concerned, as well.

They’ve sent multiple letters to federal agencies, attempting to inform the rulemaking process on fishery management plans.

Thousands of lobstermen say they fear that new regulations could leave them trapped.

“It could put a few of the smaller guys right out of business because they can’t compete with it,” lobsterman George Anderson said.

Conservation groups say it’s endangered whales that are feeling the pinch as they get tangled in rope.

Read the full story at WGME

A month after Trump’s veto, Feinstein refiles driftnet ban bill

February 10, 2021 — A bipartisan bill to end the use of drift gillnets to catch swordfish has been reintroduced in the U.S. Senate a month after then-President Donald Trump vetoed similar legislation.

U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) refiled their bill, entitled the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act, on Monday, 8 February. The bill calls for a ban on using the mile-long nets that reach 200 feet below the ocean surface.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishing industry moves to head off Northeast canyons monument reversal

January 27, 2021 — Northeast fishing advocates mobilized as President Biden moved fast to reverse executive orders from the Trump administration — possibly including Trump’s move to back off fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

Biden ordered a broad review of more than 100 actions by the Trump administration on environmental issues, including the former president’s attempts to alter national monuments. Fishing advocates moved to get in early and persuade the new administration that the U.S. fisheries management system that’s been in place for more than 40 years can handle protecting the Northeast offshore habitat without executive intervention.

“We kind of saw it coming, and we sent letters off to politicians,” said Jim Budi, who owns a swordfish and tuna longline vessel that works out of New Bedford, Mass. “We had great fishing there this year. If it wasn’t for that, we’d be in the red.”

Environmental groups pushed Biden on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, to reinstate the Obama administration’s offshore monument declaration, with its potential to foreclose most fishing at the edge of the continental shelf.

Read the full story at National Fisherman