Saving Seafood

As US East Coast ramps up offshore wind power projects, much remains unknown

September 11, 2023 — As the U.S. races to build offshore wind power projects, transforming coastlines from Maine to South Carolina, much remains unknown about how the facilities could affect the environment.

And that worries some people, particularly those who depend on the sea for their livelihoods.

“We don’t have the science to know what the impact will be,” said Jim Hutchinson, managing editor of The Fisherman magazine in New Jersey. “The attitude has been, ‘Build it and we’ll figure it out.’”

Read the full article at Associated Press

Why the Gulf of Mexico’s first offshore wind auction wasn’t a smash hit

August 30, 2023 — The Biden administration on Tuesday received a top bid of $5.6 million during the first-ever auction of offshore wind development rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

German energy giant RWE placed the highest bid for a 102,500-acre swath of water off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, which has the potential to host 1.24 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind capacity. Two other lease areas near Galveston, Texas didn’t receive any bids.

The lease sale is an important step toward building clean energy projects in a region that has long been dominated by offshore oil and gas production. Wind turbines are already spinning off the East Coast and more are being installed; meanwhile, floating offshore wind farms are being planned for California’s coastal waters. This week’s auction officially brings the emerging U.S. offshore wind industry to Gulf waters.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Fishermen, activists protesting offshore wind projects on the East Coast: ‘A manmade environmental disaster’

August 8, 2023 — Critics are sounding the alarm on the ecological consequences of the Biden administration’s green energy agenda, specifically the increase marine wildlife deaths in conjunction with offshore wind farms.

Activists along with local fishermen are particularly concerned about the rise in whale and dolphin beaching.

“What we’re seeing is a failure to properly manage the situation,” Rhode Island fisherman Chris Brown said on “The Bottom Line” Wednesday.

“The whales have been migrating from their southern stations during the spring up through the mid-Atlantic region, and they didn’t even slow down the acoustic carpet bombing. And as a result, the Atlantic was littered with the dead whales and dolphins and sharks. There doesn’t seem to be any environmental concern. This is a manmade environmental disaster that’s unfolding. I expect that it will half a whale population in 10 years and probably the same for our fish.”

So far this year, more than 30 dead whales and 30 dead dolphins have washed up on the East Coast.

Brown is among those protesting and calling on leadership to consider the consequences of such an aggressive green energy push.

Other activists including the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) have staged protests at offshore wind farms such as the South Fork Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

Read the full article at Fox Business

Top officials warned Biden admin about dangers wind energy projects pose to fishing industry, letter shows

April 25, 2023 — The executive directors of three federally established fishery councils along the East Coast expressed concern last year about the threats posed by offshore wind energy projects.

In an Aug. 22 letter to former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Amanda Lefton, the three officials — who respectively lead the New England, Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils — expressed concern about current processes for approving offshore wind development. They also made a series of recommendations to help the federal government mitigate impacts on fisheries.

“As we have stated in several past comment letters to BOEM, we are very concerned about the cumulative impacts of multiple wind energy projects on the fisheries we manage,” they stated in the letter. “The multiple wind energy projects planned along the east coast will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries.”

“The synergistic effects of multiple projects may be more than additive and this may not be sufficiently identified in project-specific documents; therefore, losses may be undercompensated by taking a project-by-project approach,” they continued.

Read the full article at Fox News

US East Coast surf clam fishery deemed “robust”

April 10, 2023 — Atlantic surf clams have been found to be abundant and not at risk of being overfished, according to a new study from the U.S. Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS)

SCEMFIS is a collaboration of academic and professional researchers convened through university partners including the University of Southern Mississippi, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and the College of William and Mary.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

East Coast congressmen seek NOAA response on scientists’ offshore wind advice

March 16, 2023 — Four East Coast congressmen asked top Biden administration officials how their agencies responded to a May 2022 scientific recommendation for wider buffer areas around offshore wind projects to protect endangered whales.

In a joint letter Tuesday Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith, both R-NJ, Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Andy Harris, R-Md., sought answers from leadership of the Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The request announced by Van Drew is a scene-setter for the southern New Jersey congressman’s March 16 public hearing in Wildwood, N.J., billed by Van Drew’s office as “an examination into offshore wind industrialization.”

It could be the first of Congressional hearings by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives into how the Biden administration is permitting offshore wind developments.

“There have been more than twenty whale deaths in just the past three months, an unprecedented number, yet this administration does not bat an eye,” Van Drew said Tuesday. “Despite calls for investigations as to why endangered whales keep washing up on our shores, this administration instead has decided to expand offshore wind development, allocating $60 million for projects in President Biden’s budget proposal.”

Offshore wind critics in Van Drew’s New Jersey coastal district have pointed to this winter’s strandings of humpback whales – a resurgent species along the Atlantic coast, unlike the highly endangered right whales – in demanding a moratorium on surveys to plan offshore wind projects off New Jersey.

They contend noise from geotechnical survey vessels may have disoriented the whales before their deaths, several determined by necropsy to have been caused by vessel strikes. NOAA officials reject those claims, saying the humpback strandings are part of a larger “unusual mortality event” that has been tracked since 2016.

So far this winter’s toll has included one right whale, a 20-year-old male washed up in Virginia, the apparent victim of a vessel strike.

The congressmen’s letter focuses on a May 2022 letter to BOEM from Sean Hayes, chief of protected species for NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full release at the National Fisherman

Speeding boats, fishing gear the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale deaths, conservation experts say

March 13, 2023 — A top ocean conservation group in the country is calling on the feds to enforce boat speed limits along the Atlantic coast and issue stronger protections to prevent more deaths of North Atlantic right whales.

The group Oceana released an analysis Thursday that found hundreds of boats had sped through mandatory and voluntary slow zones designed to protect the critically endangered species in the Virginia Beach area in the weeks leading up to a North Atlantic right whale death.

There are just 340 right whales left in the world today, a number that has declined by 25% over the past decade, according to conservation scientists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined blunt force traumatic injuries as the cause of death of the 20-year-old male right whale. The injuries mirrored those of a boat strike, a leading threat to such whales.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

U.S. refuses calls for immediate protection of North Atlantic right whales

January 26, 2023 — The U.S. government has denied two petitions to immediately protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales during the species’ calving season, raising concerns that this population of whales will continue to decline without intervention. There are currently about 340 of these whales left, making them one of the most threatened cetaceans in the world.

The two petitions — one filed by a consortium of NGOs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), and the other by the NGO Oceana — asked the U.S. government to provide emergency protection for North Atlantic whales (Eubalaena glacialis). They called for three measures aimed to reduce vessel collision, a leading cause of death for these animals. The proposed rules included establishing speed limits for ships in designated coastal zones between North Carolina and Florida during the calving season; requiring speed reductions outside of these zones when a single whale or a mother-and-calf pair is spotted; and making such rules applicable for vessels 35 feet (about 11 meters) in length and longer.

There are already some seasonal speed zones on the southeast U.S. coast, but experts say they’re not big enough to encompass the species’ entire range, especially as climate change alters the whales’ movements. Additionally, vessels don’t need to slow down outside these zones unless in the presence of three individual whales, and the current rules only apply to vessels larger than 65 feet, or about 20 meters. However, as experts point out, smaller vessels have been responsible for right whale deaths, as seen in a collision between a 54-foot (16.5-m) sportfishing yacht and a calf and mother off St. Augustine, Florida, in February 2021. The calf’s dead body washed onto the beach the next day, and the mother, known to researchers as Infinity, hasn’t been seen again.

Read the full article at Mongabay

14 whale deaths along US East Coast remain a mystery

January 24, 2023 — Local officials and environmentalists are trying to find out what is behind the mysterious death of 14 whales along the US east coast since 1 December.

Some are blaming the deaths on the development of an offshore wind farm in the area.

Officials, however, say they have found no evidence to suggest wind farms are to blame.

Since 2016, they have been tracking the “unusual mortality” of humpback whales along the eastern shores.

Over the past six years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied 178 dead humpback whales from Florida to Maine.

NOAA performed necropsies on about half the whales and found that of those, 40% of the deaths were caused by human interaction, either being caught in fishing gear or struck by vessels.

Sperm whales, an endangered species, have also been found dead along the eastern coasts.

The most recent death of a humpback whale, which washed ashore in Maryland on 16 January, prompted a press conference by NOAA officials and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), as it came amid mounting concerns a local wind farm development was to blame.

Read the full article at BBC News

America’s Scallop Harvest Projected to Decline Again in 2022

June 28, 2022 — America’s scallop fishing industry will continue to decline in catch into next year due to a decrease in the availability of the oft-pricy shellfish off the East Coast, federal regulators say.

The decline in scallops is happening as prices for the shellfish, one of the most lucrative seafoods in America, has increased amid inflation and fluctuations in catch. Seafood counters that sold scallops for $20 per pound to customers two years ago often sell them for $25 per pound or more now.

U.S. scallop fishers harvested more than 60 million pounds of scallops in 2019, but the catch has declined since, and fishers were projected to harvest about 40 million pounds of scallops in the 2021 fishing year. That number is projected to fall to 34 million pounds in the 2022 fishing year, which started this spring, according to the New England Fishery Management Council.

Read the full story at U.S. News & World Report