June 23, 2023 — The U.S. state of Maine suspended two permits essential to Nordic Aquafarms’ planned salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in Belfast, Maine, U.S.A.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection, in a decision announced on 21 June, suspended both the Site Location of Development Law and Natural Resources Protection Act Permit and its Air Emissions License for the facility, the Republican Journal reported.
June 23, 2023 — Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, introduced a bill in Congress that would block commercial offshore wind development from Lobster Management Area 1, and require a new study of how federal agencies are conducting environmental reviews for potential wind projects in the Gulf of Maine.
“BOEM’s decision not to remove one of the most lucrative and productive fishing grounds in the region from consideration for commercial offshore wind projects is just the latest in a series of unrelenting challenges to Maine fishermen,” Golden said in announcing the bill Thursday. “Prohibiting commercial wind development in LMA 1 protects Maine fishermen’s way of life and of making a living for their families and their communities, just as they have for generations.”
The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has identified more than 9.8 million areas of federal waters in the Gulf of Maine for consideration as wind energy areas for future leasing to developers. The agency included LMA 1 “and areas closed seasonally or permanently to protect the North Atlantic right whale, as potential commercial offshore wind sites,” according to Golden. “Prohibiting offshore wind development in LMA 1 would help to avoid conflict with the New England commercial and recreational fishing industries.”
June 23, 2023 — Former American Aquafarms CEO Keith Decker has successfully auctioned off the company’s facility in Gouldsboro, Maine, U.S.A. for USD 975,000 (EUR 895,000), the Ellsworth American reported.
Decker announced his resignation from American Aquafarms in early May and soon after announced the facility would be up for sale as compensation for USD 1.125 million (EUR 1.03 million) the company owed him. The company originally bought the 100,000-square-foot facility in 2020, with plans to use the facility for a closed net-pen salmon aquaculture operation in Frenchman’s Bay, before legal efforts and permit trouble effectively ended the project’s hopes of getting off the ground.
June 22, 2023 — Tony Buxton is a partner with Preti Flaherty. He represents New England Aqua Ventus and Pine Tree Offshore Wind, developing the Monhegan Project and the Maine Research Array, respectively.
Gov. Janet Mills’ Offshore Wind Initiative in 2021 negotiated a historic bipartisan legislative compromise to facilitate offshore wind development while protecting the Gulf of Maine from threats to fisheries and lobstering. The compromise banned offshore wind in Maine waters, mandated a power contract to enable construction and operation of the Maine Research Array and established the Maine Offshore Wind Research Consortium, all to protect our iconic Gulf of Maine resources, relying on both science and common sense.
The compromise continued Maine’s decades of preparation for offshore wind development to come to the Gulf of Maine’s vast and wind-rich federal waters over which Maine has no legal control. The paired objectives of resource protection and deliberate offshore wind development remain wise.
June 21, 2023 — While the ways that aquaculture can actively support commercial fisheries have been well established, there is nonetheless a tension between certain fishing and aquaculture communities. Though it can be easy to look at these two industries in a monochromatic way, aquaculture can open up brand-new opportunities for fishermen. Aquaculture farms represent another form of income for fishing families and can open up additional opportunities to employ those looking to get involved in jobs on the coast.
The tension between these communities can become prominent when certain perspectives are exclusively focused on, and National Fisherman fell into that trap with a recent article that only explored one perspective around the creation of a fish farm in Frenchman Bay, Maine. While the coastal community in Maine is a small one, it’s essential to contextualize the opportunities that projects like this can represent for hardworking fishermen who are considering expanding into the ground fishing, lobstering, and scalloping sectors of Maine’s state fisheries.
To provide that context, National Fisherman caught up with Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. He fully detailed the opportunities that aquaculture can provide fishermen, clarified the current state of Maine state regulations on aquaculture farms, outlined why what was proposed at Frenchman Bay would have never been issued a lease in Maine and more.
Read his insights below but also feel free to get in touch to let us know how National Fisherman can continue to cover these topics in a more complete manner.
June 22, 2023 — Maine lobstermen have secured a huge win in federal appeals court, thanks to a ruling over the long-debated belief that lobster fishing puts whales at risk.
Friday, a panel of judges ruled that data on entanglements in lobster fishing gear does not support the need for the new strict limits on where and how lobstermen could fish.
Those regulations, set by the National Marine Fisheries Service, were put in place under the authority of the Endangered Species Act to protect the 340 North Atlantic Right Whales whales left.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association says there is no evidence of Maine lobster gear ever killing a whale. There has been no documented entanglement of a North Atlantic Right Whale since 2004.
June 21, 2023 — We don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but a federal court ruling last week reiterated a point that we’ve been making for years — more complete data are needed for federal regulators to justify stringent regulations on Maine’s lobster fishing industry.
On Friday, a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the plan, called a biological opinion, that undergirded recent rules from the National Marine Fisheries Service aimed at making lobster and crab fishing safer for endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The court ruled that, in the absence of definitive information that right whales are being trapped in lobster and crab fishing gear, the agency couldn’t use a worst-case scenario to justify a suite of new rules on the two fisheries. The agency had called for changes in fishing gear and put parts of the ocean in New England off limits to lobster and crab fishing for several months a year.
Technically, the rules remain in place as the appeals court remanded the case back to a district court to vacate the biological opinion. But the practical impact is that fisheries service will likely have to go back to the drawing board to write a new biological opinion and any rules that stem from it.
In addition to the lawsuit, filed by lobster and crab fishing groups and the state of Maine, Congress had already granted the fisheries a six-year reprieve from new, stricter regulations through a provision added to the federal omnibus bill passed in December.
June 20, 2023 — Maine’s lobster industry scored a major legal victory Friday when an appellate court ruled federal regulators went too far to try to protect endangered whales.
In a stinging ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invalidated the biological opinion that the National Marine Fisheries Services used to impose stricter fishing regulations on lobstermen in the Gulf of Maine. In a 3-0 opinion, the court called the scientific assessment done by federal regulators “arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law” and that the agency made assumptions about the cause of North Atlantic right whale deaths with “little empirical support.”
The agency will now have to redo the scientific assessment that underlies the stricter fishing regulations that the agency tried to impose but that Maine’s congressional delegation managed to delay.
“A presumption also ignores that worst-case scenarios lie on all sides,” reads the ruling. “It is not hard to indulge in one here: ropeless fishing technologies, weak links, inserts, and trawls may not work; permanent fishery closures may be the only solution. The result may be great physical and human capital destroyed, and thousands of jobs lost, with all the degradation that attends such dislocations.”
Scientists estimate there are fewer than 350 right whales left and that entanglements in rope from fishing gear pose a major threat to the survival of the species alongside collisions with ships and environmental changes. The lobster industry and its allies in Maine staunchly disagree and argue that the industry has taken numerous steps — at significant financial cost to fishermen — to avoid entanglements and ensure that lobster ropes and gear break free if a whale encounters them.
June 20, 2023 — New England lobstermen have won a favorable ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which reversed a lower court decision and has granted relief.
In a decision Friday afternoon, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg – the senior justice – wrote that the court was reversing a summary judgment of the District Court for the National Marine Fisheries Service and awarding a summary judgment to the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the State of Maine Department of Marine Resources.
In the decision, the court ruled that the “federal government went too far” in its regulatory process “when they sought to impose significant restrictions on New England’s lobster industry, according to a release.
June 16, 2023 –A U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled in favor of Maine lobstermen in ordering the National Marine Fisheries Service to vacate a 2021 biological opinion regarding North Atlantic right whales that led to more stringent rules being implemented for lobster fishing.
The unanimous 3-0 ruling, filed with a majority opinion written by U.S. Senior Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg, found the service went too far in its analysis of the lobster and Jonah crab industries’ potential harm to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.