Saving Seafood

Maine lawmakers asked to decide fate of offshore wind power

May 5, 2021 — The complex questions and decisions about offshore wind power for Maine have now been dropped in the laps of the Legislature.

Lawmakers on Tuesday heard two competing bills. One would ban any projects and the other would slow down some of it but keep the one current project moving.

Gov. Janet Mills and environmental groups are strongly supporting offshore wind development as a tool to fight climate change, with more renewable energy. But Maine fishermen say its risking great harm to the lobster industry and other fisheries because of a range of possible environmental impacts, from vibrations disrupting fish and marine mammals to mooring chains damaging the ocean floor and harming marine life here.

There are few scientific studies to prove or disprove those impacts, and fishermen say the risk of moving ahead with those wind turbine projects is simply too great.

“What if it is as bad as we think it is?” asked Jim Wotton of Friendship in a recent interview. “Where will we be then? Is it worth taking a chance on the Gulf of Maine for this?”

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Conflict in Gulf of Maine Scallop Fishery

March 23, 2017 — Since the start of the scallop season this month, Jim Wotton has dragged heavy dredges along the seabed off Gloucester, hauling in as much as 200 pounds a day of the valuable clams, the area’s federal limit for small-boat fishermen.

Now, to his dismay, dozens of larger, industrial-sized boats have been steaming into the same gray waters, scooping up as many scallops as they can. Unlike their smaller counterparts, the large vessels have no quota on the amount they can catch; they’re only limited by the number of days they can fish.

It’s a regulatory loophole that small-boat fishermen fear could wipe out the resurgent scallop grounds in the northern Gulf of Maine. This year, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimate that the large boats are likely to catch about a million pounds of scallops – roughly half of the area’s estimated stock.

“That would be devastating,” said Wotton, 48, who fishes out of Friendship, Maine. “They’re taking our future. There won’t be anything for us next year.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe