Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Can a $10M wind-energy center in New Bedford withstand opposition from locals and Trump?

January 17, 2025 — A state agency will continue efforts to develop a more than $10 million offshore-wind-based, ocean-energy innovation center in New Bedford in 2025, despite national opposition to offshore wind and local opposition to a proposed site.

Nationally, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to halt offshore wind development.

Locally, an attorney has compiled 236 signatures in opposition to the center’s “preferred” site, a 17,000-square-foot parking lot abutting the Bourne Counting House off McArthur Drive on Homer’s Wharf, leased through the Port Authority. The center would include the Bourne Counting House building, which would be renovated.

Read the full article at The Herald News

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket session with offshore wind regulators moved due to ‘volume of questions’

January 15, 2025 — The volume of questions about an offshore wind turbine blade folding over and sending broken pieces into the ocean, which occurred on July 13 south of the Islands, has led to a rescheduled meeting between Nantucket leaders and federal regulators.

The public information meeting the leaders were planning to host next week with the regulators about the Vineyard Wind 1 project and the blade failure has been moved to Feb. 3.

In December, the Nantucket Select Board invited the public to submit questions they had about the project for representatives of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. An announcement from the Select Board this week about the meeting date change explained, “due to the volume of questions received by BSEE, more time was needed to process and prepare responses adequately.”

The Zoom meeting, previously slated for Jan. 14, will convene at 5 p.m. on Feb. 3.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

MASSACHSUETTS: Lobster group hopes state follows Maine, scraps stricter fishing rules

January 13, 2025 — Maine fishing regulators on Friday scrapped a plan for stricter fishing rules amid concerns about a decline in baby lobsters in the warming waters off New England, and a group representing Massachusetts lobstermen hopes this state follows suit.

The regulators were looking to institute a new federal rule, Addendum 27, that fishermen need to abide by a larger minimum size for the lobsters they trap. The change is only 1/16th of an inch or 1.6 millimeters, but regulators have said it will help preserve the population of the valuable crustaceans, as many small lobsters will need to be tossed back to the ocean.

Read the full article at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket plans public webinar on Vineyard Wind turbine failure

January 9, 2025 — The Town of Nantucket and federal officials are set to hold a public information session to address questions about a wind turbine blade failure that happened last summer.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Nantucket Select Board will host a Zoom webinar on Feb. 3, 2025, at 5 p.m. to discuss the July 13, 2024, Vineyard Wind turbine blade incident.

Read the full article at WUN

Trump Again Knocks Wind Energy, Subsidies

January 8, 2025 — It was a little after 11 o’clock Tuesday morning when Gov. Maura Healey said on GBH Radio that she hoped President-elect Donald Trump would not do much that would disrupt Massachusetts’ pursuit of clean energy.

An hour later, Trump put that notion to rest when he doubled down on his intention of setting “a policy where no windmills are being built” and pointed a finger at Massachusetts during a press conference in Florida.

“They’re dangerous. You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales, where they had two whales wash ashore in, I think, a 17-year period and now they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” Trump said as he opposed both onshore and offshore wind generation as costly, polluting, and harmful to the environment.

There has been an “unprecedented” number of whale strandings along the south shore of Massachusetts this year, officials from the Plymouth-based nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation said. A female humpback whale washed up on Rexhame Beach in Marshfield the day after Christmas, the group said — the sixth large whale carcass to wash up between Weymouth and Plymouth since July.

An official from the group Green Oceans told WJAR last week that the juvenile humpback whale that was stranded along Richmond Pond Beach in Westport was “the 13th whale that has washed up dead in the past three weeks from Massachusetts to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

President-elect Donald Trump says Massachusetts wind farms are ‘driving whales crazy’

January 8, 2025 — President-elect Donald Trump says wind farms off the Massachusetts coast are “driving the whales crazy,” and his administration will look to enact a policy that halts the development of the “garbage” energy source.

“They are dangerous,” Trump said of wind farms during a lengthy news conference Tuesday, touching on his central priorities. “You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales … The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.”

Throughout his campaign and since winning reelection in November, Trump vowed that his administration would cut down on wind farms. He doubled down on that stance Tuesday, saying no windmills will be built when he regains office on Jan. 20.

The comments came after President Biden’s announcement Monday of a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, a move looked at as a last-minute effort to block a potential expansion under the incoming administration.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

Fishermen may not like offshore wind, but some work for it

January 6, 2025 — A fishing boat named Saints and Angels sat docked at Leonard’s Wharf after a recent fishing trip. Ice covered some of the deck as a man cut into the boat’s steel side to create a door for scientific buoy deployment. Nearby vessels were being worked on, some with anti-offshore-wind flags whipping in the wind. Just the American flag flew on the Saints as Tony Alvernaz climbed up to the wheelhouse.

The blue-hulled scalloper, built in 1997, started out as a tender boat, transporting loads of fish between vessels and processing facilities. After a few years catching tuna, the vessel brought in over a million pounds of scallops over its life. But times, regulations and fish stocks have changed. The bivalves are still relatively lucrative, but vessels have spent more and more days sitting at the docks while expenses have risen.

So two years ago, Alvernaz, the part-owner of six scallopers, put aside his personal feelings and did something he never thought he’d do: He signed up to work for an offshore wind company.

In about two years, Vineyard Wind has paid about $8 million to local fishermen and vessel owners — many from New Bedford, like Alvernaz — to provide safety and security work during the wind farm’s construction (a figure that includes fuel costs).

About 45 fishing boats have worked as safety vessels, guard vessels, science vessels and scout vessels on the project, which remains under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. This could mean sitting at a site 24/7, guarding scour protection before the monopiles go in, identifying and transmitting locations of fishing gear to be avoided, or moving through the wind area looking out for and alerting other vessels of activity.

It’s an example of collaboration and co-existence amid what has been a contentious relationship between the two industries.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

‘Much uncertainty.’ Cape, Mass. leaders see political shifts that may slow offshore wind

January 6, 2025 — The future of offshore wind is at a pivotal point this year, marked by a mix of determination and uncertainty.

On Dec. 20, the Biden-Harris administration granted final approval for SouthCoast Wind, the eleventh offshore wind project it has approved. With up to 141 turbines and the potential to generate 2.4 gigawatts of electricity, the SouthCoast Wind project, in a federal lease area south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, is a key part of the region’s clean energy goals steadfastly promoted by Gov. Maura Healey, and many legislators and environmental advocates.

But the incoming Trump-Vance administration could dramatically alter the regulatory and financial landscape for offshore wind. Their less favorable stance toward the industry raises concerns about the pace of future projects and the viability of less mature proposals. This is especially true for the Gulf of Maine lease areas, where the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has provisionally awarded four of eight lease areas to Avangrid Renewables and Invenergy NE Offshore Wind, including due east of Cape Cod.

Local concerns and political shifts

Those who have voiced concerns about offshore development, meanwhile, say a cooler federal stance on offshore wind would be welcome. Many critics, particularly on Cape Cod, say the offshore wind industry is advancing too quickly without adequate consultation with those who will be most affected — local residents, fishermen, and coastal communities.

Susanne Conley, a Barnstable resident who’s a leader of the Save Greater Dowses Beach citizens group, advocates for a reevaluation of offshore wind policy. While she supports the transition to renewable energy, she believes the Biden-Harris offshore wind program should be halted, particularly in light of what she perceives as insufficient baseline environmental data “to understand the effect of these massive projects on the fisheries, on all ocean life, and on coastal communities.”

Read the full story at The Standard-Times

Vineyard Wind meets one 2024 deadline, misses another

January 3, 2024 — Vineyard Wind made mixed progress on its wind farm at the end of the year, meeting one deadline while missing another. It installed the last of 62 foundations for its wind turbines, a new map shows, pounding the remaining pieces into the seafloor before a New Year deadline, when pile driving is restricted through May. But the project missed its former goal of being fully operational by 2024, and has quite a bit of work ahead in 2025.

With the foundations finished, all but three are now connected to yellow transition pieces, which will allow tower installation to proceed, according to the Dec. 30 map. But the same map shows the project still has to install 30 towers and generators, and about 120 blades. That means dozens more barge transits in and out of the Port of New Bedford with the major turbine components on board.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing Vessel Guardian runs aground near Wellfleet

January 3, 2024 — Early Thursday morning, the F/V Guardian ran aground about a mile north of Newcomb Hollow Beach near the Truro/Wellfleet line. Local emergency responders, including Wellfleet and Truro Fire Departments, Cape Cod National Seashore Park Rangers, Massachusetts Environmental Police, and Wellfleet Police, quickly mobilized to the scene.

The Wellfleet Fire Department reported receiving the initial dispatch at 8:48 a.m., prompting a coordinated response effort. A Wellfleet crew used the department’s UTV to access the beach, while ambulances from both Wellfleet and Truro were staged at the Newcomb Hollow parking lot as a precaution.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman