May 7, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear two cases challenging the federal approval of Vineyard Wind. The court denied the petitions Monday.
Commercial fishing interests sued the federal agencies involved in approving the wind farm, which is under construction 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
The lawsuits were originally filed in 2021 and 2022.
May 6, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied petitions from the fishing industry and a conservative think tank challenging the Vineyard Wind project, rejecting their March requests that the country’s highest court hear their cases.
A fishing industry lobbying group, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), sued the lead government regulator of offshore wind in early 2022, alleging that by approving Vineyard Wind, the agency had violated several acts, including those protecting existing ocean users and endangered species. The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which represents fishermen and a fishing company in Rhode Island in another lawsuit, had also petitioned the Supreme Court.
RODA had already lost its case in two other courts: first, in 2023 in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, where a judge sided with the project and regulators; and second, in 2024 in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where the judge upheld the lower court’s decision. TPPF also had its case dismissed by the lower courts.
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court denied our petition,” said Lane Johnston, executive director of RODA, in an email Monday. “This issue is of such importance to members of the commercial fishing industry. RODA will continue our efforts to combat the destructive industrialization of the nation’s marine resources.”
May 5, 2025 — The Supreme Court has declined to reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of a major offshore wind project off the Massachusetts coast, in a reprieve for an industry facing rising political headwinds.
On Monday morning, the justices denied the parallel petitions led by the fishing company Seafreeze Shoreside and the fishing industry trade group Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) challenging agencies’ approvals for the Vineyard Wind 1 project.
The 62-turbine wind farm is under construction 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard and is expected to be completed this year. Vineyard Wind’s joint developers Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners declined through their attorney to comment on the Supreme Court’s decision.
May 5, 2025 — The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC)—a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with an office in Woods Hole—has seen a 27 percent reduction in staff since President Donald Trump took office, according to current and former NOAA employees, who asked not to be named in this story for fear of retaliation.
In addition to the lab in Woods Hole, the NEFSC has four other offices—one each in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine. It is not yet clear how many of the departed staff worked in Woods Hole, which is described on the NOAA Fisheries website as the “focal point for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s operations, management and information needs.”
The 27 percent reduction in staff includes people who took early retirement or voluntary separations. It also includes individuals who were let go as “probationary” employees—new hires or employees who have moved into a new role.
NOAA declined to comment, citing a policy at the agency not to discuss internal personnel matters. This reduction in staff comes as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal spending.
April 25, 2025 — For the third time in less than two years, a hunk of dock fell into New Bedford Harbor on Wednesday afternoon, again raising red flags about neglected port maintenance. The collapse injured no one but dropped a metal shed into the water.
The asphalt-surface dock and the shed dropped into about 20 feet of water late Wednesday afternoon outside the Sea Watch International processing plant along Antonio Costa Avenue, said Gordon Carr, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority.
He said it happened when no one was around, at about 3:30 p.m. The sunken storage shed had stood in an area that had been blocked by Jersey barriers since a neighboring section of the dock collapsed a year ago.
Carr said there was a “small sheen” on the water Wednesday, but it was not clear what, if anything, was in the shed and if anything spilled into the water.
“There’s a boom out there now to contain” any possible contamination, he said, referring to a long, floating tube used to corral spills of oil and other substances on the water. He said representatives of Sea Watch, a clam and quahog operation that uses that pier to unload catch, were trying to figure out what was in the shed.
April 24, 2025 — Regulators have reopened commercial scallop fishing in the Northern Gulf of Maine after the season was briefly paused when federal officials failed to approve recommended catch limits in time.
The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) approved new quotas for the 2025 and 2026 scallop seasons in December 2024, setting a quota of 675,563 pounds for 2025 and a quota of 506,672 pounds for 2026 in the Northern Gulf of Maine federal fishery. However, the federal government still hadn’t approved those quotas before the 2025 season launched 1 April.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
April 24, 2025 — Before the environmentalists and fearmongers in the press get their oil skins, jumpers and mesh undies in a bind over President Donald Trump’s executive order concerning the fishing industry, they need to catch their collective breath and slowly exhale.
First of all, read the damn thing!
The Associated Press says, “The order represents a dramatic shift in federal policy on fishing in U.S. waters by prioritizing commercial fishing interests over efforts to allow the fish supply to increase.”
That is fake news.
The executive order calls for the Secretary of Commerce to immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overburden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.
April 22, 2025 — Advocacy groups opposed to offshore wind development are calling for the Supreme Court to consider how federal approval of a project off the coast of Massachusetts could be violating recent high court decisions curbing agency authority.
The America First Policy Institute and others recently filed “friend of the court” briefs backing a pair of petitions led by the fishing company Seafreeze Shoreside and the fishing industry trade group Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) seeking to block completion of the Vineyard Wind 1 project.
The briefs are backing the parallel claims before the court: that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management overstepped its authority and that lower courts failed to properly review the agency’s decision after a Supreme Court decision limited courts’ deference to agency decision-making.
April 22, 2025 — At a dock on Cape Cod’s Buzzards Bay, a group of researchers and marine biology students lie on their stomachs, peering over the wooden planks to examine what living things are stuck underneath.
Using fishing nets and kitchen spatulas, they scrape samples into plastic trays for a closer look. Kristin Osborne, a sea squirt expert and assistant professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, likes to use her bare hands.
“I said I wasn’t gonna get down here and do this, but I can’t help myself,” Osborne said with a laugh while reaching into the chilly ocean. She has a sea squirt tattoo on her left middle finger.
Sea squirts are a type of filter feeding marine invertebrate officially known as tunicates. These colorful blobs can squirt water when removed from their aquatic homes, earning them the nickname.
April 17, 2025 — Massachusetts is calling on federal regulators to act swiftly to ensure the 2025 commercial groundfish season opens on time. On April 15, Tom O’Shea, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging immediate regulatory action to authorize the May 1 start date.
“Without fishing measures, federal fishing vessels from ports of Gloucester south to New Bedford will be tied up with no opportunity to sustain their businesses,” O’Shea wrote in the letter.
The Northeast multispecies (groundfish) fishery is jointly managed by NOAA Fisheries and the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) under the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan. The plan governs thirteen species, including iconic New England stocks like Atlantic cod, haddock, halibut, and winter flounder. However, to legally land and possess these fish, federal regulations must be in place to start the fishing year on May 1.
If the Department of Commerce does not act in time, federal groundfish vessels in Massachusetts will be effectively shut out of the fishery, causing serious economic disruptions across the state’s fishing ports. “The impacts will be particularly acute in Gloucester, New Bedford, and Boston, where our federal groundfish permit holders are concentrated,” the Department of Fish and Game warned in a separate briefing.