Saving Seafood

Biden Administration Announces a Major Offshore Wind Plan

March 29, 2021 — The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain a foothold in the United States.

The plan sets a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. To help meet that target, the administration said it would accelerate permitting of projects off the Atlantic Coast and prepare to open up waters near New York and New Jersey for development. The administration also plans to offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrading the nation’s ports to support wind construction.

The moves come as President Biden prepares a roughly $3 trillion economic recovery package that will focus heavily on infrastructure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials made a similar case on Monday, saying offshore wind deployment would create 44,000 new jobs directly in the offshore wind sector, such as building and installing turbines, as well as 33,000 new indirect jobs.

Read the full story at The New York Times

NOAA’s Paul Doremus: Seafood aligns well with Biden’s sustainability goals

March 22, 2021 — Senior officials from NOAA Fisheries speaking at the Seafood Expo North America Reconnect event on Thursday, 18 March, said U.S. President Joe Biden’s emphasis on action on climate change could align well with support for the domestic seafood industry.

The new administration has not even been in office for two month and still have several political appointments waiting to be confirmed. However, NOAA Fisheries Acting Assistant Administrator Paul Doremus told the audience numerous synergies exist between the fishing industry and climate interests in Biden’s “building back better” resiliency plan.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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

GOV. DUNLEAVY: Secretary Blinken, protect Alaska’s fisheries

March 18, 2021 — Dear Secretary of State Blinken,

In light of your imminent meeting with Chinese officials in Alaska, I write to impress upon you the international challenges faced by our commercial fishing industry.

Perhaps no group of Alaskans has been impacted more severely by the global economic collapse than our fishers and processors. Both coped admirably with the logistical challenges of running businesses that rely on the free movement of labor, but neither escaped the pain of demand shock that rippled outward from shuttered restaurants, reductions in consumer spending, and the partial collapse of many export markets.

However, not all of the industries’ woes can be traced back to the pandemic. Many are preexisting conditions stemming from hostile decisions made by China and Russia during the previous decade.

In July 2018, China’s government imposed retaliatory tariffs on Alaska seafood, decimating our market share in the world’s largest and fastest-growing seafood market. Today, these tariffs have reached an outrageous 30-40% on top of several extreme and unproven COVID-mitigation measures intended to slow the importation of Alaska seafood.

Read the full opinion piece at the Juneau Empire

NOAA to Host Listening Sessions on Section 216(C) of the Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis

March 18, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA is seeking public input in response to an Executive Order issued on January 27, 2021, titled Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.

Section 216(c) of the Executive Order Directs NOAA to collect recommendations on how to make fisheries—including aquaculture—and protected resources more resilient to climate change, including changes in management and conservation measures, and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research.

NOAA requests written input on 216(c) from interested parties on how best to achieve the objectives of the as described in the Executive Order. Interested persons are invited to submit comments by email by April 2, 2021 to OceanResources.Climate@noaa.gov.

National Stakeholder Calls

We are also hosting three national stakeholder calls—two are open to all stakeholders and one is specifically for state and tribal governments.

March 23, 2021: Conference call open to all stakeholders nationally
Time: 12:00 to 2:00p.m. EST
Dial in: (888) 769-8793 (toll-free); or (212) 547-0306
Passcode: 4379815#
Time limit: 3 minutes per person; additional rounds as time allows
This call will be recorded

March 25, 2021: Conference call open to all state and tribal governments
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. EST
Dial in: (877) 716-4288 (toll-free); or (312) 470-7386
Passcode: 6268962#
This call will be recorded

April 1, 2021: Conference call open to all stakeholders nationally
Time: 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. EST
Dial in: (800) 857-9693 (toll-free); or (630) 395-0354
Passcode: 5473603#
Time limit: 3 minutes per person; additional rounds as time allows
This call will be recorded

Read the notice as filed in the Federal Register.

For further information:

Heather Sagar, heather.sagar@noaa.gov, 301-427-8019.

US seafood industry set to benefit from COVID-19 relief package

March 17, 2021 — U.S. President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law on Thursday, 11 March, almost one year after the CARES Act established the country’s first federal coronavirus relief bill.

The USD 1.9 trillion (EUR 1.6 trillion) American Rescue Plan Act is the largest spending package in U.S. history and contains significantly less relief for the commercial fishing and seafood industries than the CARES Act included, though much of that funding is yet to be distributed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Deb Haaland Becomes First Native American Cabinet Secretary

March 16, 2021 — Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency.

Ms. Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to the House. But her new position is particularly redolent of history because the department she now leads has spent much of its history abusing or neglecting America’s Indigenous people.

Beyond the Interior Department’s responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public land, federal waters off the United States coastline, a huge system of dams and reservoirs across the Western United States and the protection of thousands of endangered species.

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” she wrote on Twitter before the vote. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

NATIONAL LAW REVIEW: Expectations for Offshore Wind Under the Biden Administration

March 11, 2021 — President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House in January was, as customary for any new executive branch leader, met by outsized expectations on the part of supporters and detractors alike. Among the countless areas of public policy set to be affected by the new administration, perhaps no one issue is more anticipated to be in play than energy and environmental policy.

The heightened set of expectations around energy policy began with the campaign, when Team Biden consistently placed climate change issues among its leading priorities — a trend that noticeably continued with Cabinet picks, as nominees for agencies from Defense to Transportation to Treasury cited climate considerations as key factors affecting their respective portfolios. On January 27, 2021, shortly after taking office, the Biden administration released a series of executive actions that included a stated goal of reaching a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”

Perhaps no single industry would be more critical to the realization of this far-reaching carbon-free goal than offshore wind, which has emerged in the United States over the past several years as a potentially game-changing source of clean energy generation, based on its earlier-moving success in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, along the country’s populous coastal areas, where fifty three percent of US residents reside, offshore wind presents the most viable option to build up renewable energy resources in the foreseeable future.

Read the full story at the National Law Review

America’s biggest offshore wind farm is on the verge of federal approval

March 11, 2021 — America’s offshore wind infrastructure is modest: the only turbines in the ocean today power a small community’s worth of homes from a wind farm off Block Island. But within two years, the number of American homes powered by the renewable energy source could grow to nearly half a million.

Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says an environmental review released by the federal government this week brings the company closer to its goal of supplying 800 megawatts of electricity to New England’s grid by 2023.

“More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry,” Pedersen said.

The much-anticipated study from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found the only major environmental impact from the turbines would be felt in the region’s commercial fisheries.

Many fishermen fear Vineyard Wind is leaving too narrow a distance between turbines for vessels to safely navigate during bad weather. Annie Hawkins, director of the seafood industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said the federal government has also failed to set guidelines for compensating fishing crews that will lose access to squid and lobsters they once caught in Vineyard Wind’s 118-square-mile lease area.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

Biden signs American Rescue Plan, providing aid for restaurants, seafood industry

March 11, 2021 — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, 11 March, signed the USD 1.9 trillion (EUR 1.59 trillion) American Rescue Plan Act into law, opening the door for billions in aid to go to businesses – including nearly USD 29 billion (EUR 24.2 billion) for a restaurant industry that’s been battered by closures and other restrictions over the past year due to COVID-19.

On Thursday, the National Restaurant Association lauded the bill’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which association president and CEO Tom Bene said will help save jobs across the country.

Read the full story at Seafood Source