Saving Seafood

Federal Agency To Study Effects Of Electric Pulses From Proposed Wind Farm On Fish

March 28, 2018 — Federal officials say they are looking at new studies of fish species that migrate off the coast of Long Island and their potential reactions to electric pulses from the transmission cables of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, in response to concerns raised by fishermen and the East Hampton Town Trustees.

Concerns about how fish might react to the electric magnetic field, or EMF, given off by the wind farm’s foot-thick power cable when it comes ashore have become the main objection from the East Hampton Town Trustees and the South Fork’s commercial baymen.

Fishermen rely on the annual migrations of fish through the relatively shallow waters within a couple of miles of the shore on their way to summer haunts in the bays. They worry that even if the EMF pulses given off by the sort of cable that would connect to the wind farm were minor—as studies suggest—the subtle impulses could be enough to divert fish in their migrations and away from the near-shore areas.

In the earliest discussions of the issue over the last several months, representatives of Deepwater Wind have presented the results of studies conducted at the existing wind farm off Block Island and by scientists around the giant offshore wind farms in Europe, as well as laboratory tests that show the effects of EMF on migrating fish to be inconsequential.

But fishermen and their supporters have said those studies are of little reassurance to them, since they involve different scales, different types of sea floor or different species of fish than those that are of the utmost importance to local baymen.

“What they tested in Europe is not that relevant. What they tested at Block Island, with a cable one-quarter the size of this, is not that relevant,” said Gary Cobb, an East Hampton man who has been reviewing the work done thus far on EMF and other details of offshore wind development on behalf of fishermen. “And you need several years of data for any of it to be useful.”

Earlier this winter, the Town Trustees issued a call for more studies—along with an aggressive demand for financial support from Deepwater for fishermen who are impacted by the project—to examine the effects of EMF on fishes that migrate to Long Island in summer.

Read the full story at 27 East

 

NEW YORK: Fishermen Demand Answers on Wind Power Plan

December 14, 2017 — An effort by Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to construct the South Fork Wind Farm approximately 30 miles east of Montauk, to alleviate the concerns of skeptical fishermen over disruption or destruction of their livelihood took an incremental step forward when the company’s president and vice president of development addressed a standing-room-only crowd at East Hampton Town Hall on Monday.

Concerns remain, however, with commercial fishermen demanding to see data that Deepwater Wind has promised but has yet to produce, along with assurances that they will be compensated for losses resulting from construction or operation of the wind farm.

The town trustees, who hosted the gathering at their last meeting of 2017, listened as Chris van Beek, Deepwater Wind’s president, and Clint Plummer, the vice president, insisted that the South Fork Wind Farm will be a benign installation, its turbines positioned so far from each other that fishing will not be impeded, and its transmission cable safely buried in the ocean floor.

Ongoing postconstruction surveys around the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, which Deepwater Wind built and operates, demonstrate no negative impacts, they told the audience, conceding, however, that some fishermen were compensated for interruptions to their business during its construction.

“So far, it’s the conclusion that the fish habitat is as good as it was, or perhaps a little bit better,” Mr. van Beek said of the Block Island Wind Farm. “Especially fishing in the wind farm . . . is spectacular.” Recreational fishermen, he said, have migrated to waters around the turbines, which he said act as artificial reefs.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

New York Commercial Fishermen Want Gov. Cuomo to Sue Federal Government Over Fluke Quota

October 10, 2017 — Several dozen fishermen, women and lawmakers last week urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to make good on a promise to sue the federal government over New York’s disproportionately low share of the fluke fishery.

At a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall last Wednesday, the gathering of fishing interests sought to unify their agenda before a meeting with top state officials scheduled for next month.

The commercial fishery for fluke was shut down in September for the first time in recent memory. It reopened Oct. 1 with a 50-pound daily limit. New York gets 7.6 percent of the commercial fluke quota, while North Carolina and Virginia get more than 20 percent each.

Chuck Morici, a Montauk commercial fisherman, used an empty fish basket to demonstrate the inequities. New York’s current daily quota fills the basket by about a third, he said, while boats from Virginia can take 153 baskets — about 10,000 pounds.

Read the full story from Newsday at Seafood News

NEW YORK: Advocates Urge Study on Importance of Fisheries

May 5, 2017 — Representatives of East Hampton Town’s Fisheries Advisory Committee this week again asked the town to help fund a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic importance of fisheries on the East End and reiterated fishermen’s concerns about the Deepwater Wind offshore turbine installation.

The committee would like to hire Cornell Cooperative Extension to conduct the economic analysis, and its members are seeking participation from East Hampton and other local municipalities in order to raise the $100,000 needed to pay for it.

Brad Loewen, the chairman of the fisheries committee, who is a bayman and a former town councilman, said the committee has also been examining how — or if — the State Department of Environmental Conservation considers potential detrimental effects on fisheries when assessing the impact of proposed projects, such as the offshore wind farm. With unsatisfactory responses so far from the D.E.C. to requests for information, the committee, which is working with John Jilnicki, a town attorney, may ask the town board to submit a Freedom of Information Law request for the needed documents.

While the offshore wind turbines 30 miles from Montauk Point may be inevitable, Mr. Loewen said, “the last thing we want to see is that cable go through Napeague and Gardiner’s Bays, and come ashore in the bay. It’s a disaster,” he said.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

Flounder Are Vanishing

April 29, 2016 — With winter flounder said to be almost nonexistent, Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences asked the East Hampton Town Trustees at a meeting on Monday to endorse the collection of data this summer in Napeague Harbor to find out why.

Ms. McElroy said not only were recreational landings of adult winter flounder in New York’s inland waters almost nonexistent but mortality for juveniles appears higher in Long Island waters than elsewhere. The study being planned would be funded by the National Marine Fisheries Service and include a random survey of waterways from Napeague to Jamaica Bay. The goal, she said, is to incrementally rebuild the stocks.

Genetic studies in 2010 and 2011 had found that winter flounder in Long Island waters come from a very small parental stock, she said. As few as 1,200 fish contributed to the individuals at six study sites across the island, with fewer than 200 contributing in some bays. “This was very troubling. The more diversity in the gene pool, the more ability to respond to changes in the environment,” she said.

The Stony Brook team is to count and measure all winter flounder to estimate mortality and to take samples from up to 50 fish to assess responses to stress, among other factors affecting the fishery. A caging study in three areas of Shinnecock Bay will collect up to 450 additional fish in an effort to determine optimum locations for caged fish, an effort to shield juveniles from predators. Mortality rates in and outside the cages will be measured, along with dissolved oxygen, salinity, and temperature.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star