Saving Seafood

Offshore Wind Could Finally Start to Catch on in the US

June 29, 2018 — There’s a huge amount of energy blowing in the wind right offshore, but America has been slow to take advantage of it, with just one small offshore wind farm in U.S. waters. But that may soon be changing.

Last month, Massachusetts selected an 800 megawatt (MW) offshore wind project to power about 400,000 homes off Martha’s Vineyard, while Rhode Island announced a 400 MW project in the same general area. Around the same time, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy committed to a whopping 3,500 MW of offshore wind by 2030—the largest state pledge to date.

Massachusetts as well as other states like New York have rolled out ambitious offshore wind targets in recent years too, and even the federal government has made some tentative nods of approval. On Tuesday, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources had a surprisingly harmonious discussion of a bill aimed at boosting offshore wind through job training programs. In April, oil-loving Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said there was an “enormous opportunity” blowing in the wind offshore.

“I think a lot of the success [of offshore wind], if it does continue to steamroll, will depend on how well these projects are executed and what kind of prices they come in at,” Doug Vine, Senior Energy Fellow with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told Earther.

Indeed, the cost of generating juice is still something of a challenge for offshore wind in the U.S. Power from the five turbines comprising the Block Island Wind Farm—America’s first and only offshore wind farm—is priced at about 25 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). That’s cheaper than the expensive (and dirty) diesel fuel residents of the sleepy vacation town of Block Island were using before, but still considerably higher than what ratepayers throughout the state are used to.

Things are moving in the right direction, though. In Europe, the cost of offshore wind has dropped steeply in recent years as the market has grown and turbines have become bigger and better. Some of that cost reduction is being seen stateside, too. Maryland commissioned two offshore wind farms last year at a 20-year fixed price of 13 cents per kWh, about half of Block Island.

Read the full story at Earther

MASSACHUSETTS: Grant Awarded to Protect Local Waters, Sea Creatures

June 29, 2018 — The Baker-Polito Administration today awarded $542,354 in grants to 16 projects across the state for the restoration and improvement of aquatic habitat, rivers and watersheds, and protection of endangered marine animals, including at-risk sea turtles and the rarest large whale, the North Atlantic right whale.

The grants, funded by the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, were announced by Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton during an event at the Waquoit Bay Estuary Watershed.

“The Massachusetts Environmental Trust continues to have a meaningful impact on the Commonwealth’s environmental resources and natural habitat,” said Governor Charlie Baker. “Funding projects that aim to preserve and protect marine wildlife and environmental resources is consistent with our Administration’s commitment to working closely with local partners around the Commonwealth to improve natural habitats and promote environmental stewardship.”

Since it was founded in 1988 as part of the Boston Harbor cleanup, the Massachusetts Environmental Trust has awarded more than $20 million in grants to organizations statewide that provide a wide array of environmental services, from supporting water projects in communities to protecting coastal habitats. Funding for this program comes from the sale of the state’s three environmentally-themed specialty license plates: the Right Whale Tail, the Leaping Brook Trout, and the Blackstone Valley Mill.

“The grants being awarded by the Baker-Polito Administration will help to protect marine animals and restore critical aquatic ecosystems,” said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton. “This funding has been made possible because over 40,000 drivers in Massachusetts choose to purchase one of the three environmental license plates, and I applaud our state’s residents for their continued commitment to the well-being of the Commonwealth’s environment.”

Read the full story at WBSM

Salem State University professors win $296K for Cape Ann project

June 29, 2018 — Two Salem State University marine researchers will receive just over $296,000 in Saltonstall-Kennedy grant funds to expand their project aimed at developing offshore commercial shellfish aquaculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday.

The project by SSU marine biology professor Mark R. Fregeau and SSU colleague Edward Maney Jr. is the only North Shore-based project included among the 38 projects nationally that will receive a slice of the $9 million NOAA is doling out in the 2018 Saltonstall-Kennedy funding cycle.

“The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the development of offshore commercial shell aquaculture as a sustainable, viable alternative or enhancement to current fishing practices that is compatible with conservation of protected species,” NOAA said in its summary of the SSU project.

The two researchers have been working in the waters off Cape Ann, collecting data from solitary longline mussel aquacultures near Hodgkins Cove in Gloucester and Sandy Bay in Rockport. They are trying to develop a concept to produce an aqua-farm that could extend 30 to 35 acres at a water depth of 150 feet to leave the bivalves out of reach of their natural predators, such as crabs and starfish.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Right whales: The fight for survival

June 28, 2018 — Will $5 million in research funds every year for 10 years save the right whale from extinction? A group of lawmakers hopes so.

Companion bills in the U.S. Senate and House, filed by five senators and four representatives, including the Cape’s Bill Keating, have put forward The SAVE Right Whales Act of 2018 (aka Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, Act of 2018).

It would establish a grant program to fund collaborative projects between states, nongovernmental organization, and members of the fishing and shipping industries to reduce the impacts of human activities on North Atlantic right whales.

“There are fewer than 450 North Atlantic right whales remaining in the world, and their population is rapidly declining,” said Scott Kraus, vice president and chief scientist of Marine Mammal Conservation at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.

“The biggest threat to their survival is entanglement in fishing gear. Eighty-five percent of right whales have been entangled once, and 60 percent have been entangled twice. This proposed bill is a great start toward finding solutions that protect both whales and the fishing industry. It calls for science-led conservation efforts with all stakeholders working cooperatively. Researchers, fishermen and government officials coming together is the only way that sustainable change will happen,” he said.

The northern reaches of Cape Cod Bay are familiar territory for right whales; they typically are the first whales seen returning to the area after the new year. In 2018 the first group, of about 15, was spotted in mid-January by Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘Wicked Tuna’ captain, charter owner to treat warriors to a day fishing

June 28, 2018 — On Wednesday, as the U.S. celebrates the 242nd birthday of its Declaration of Independence, fisherman Capt. Dave Marciano of “Wicked Tuna” and Tom Orrell of Gloucester-based Yankee Fleet, are going for the hat trick.

For the third consecutive Independence Day, the two men who first met when a much younger Marciano worked for Yankee Fleet, are teaming up to provide a boat full of veterans — some of them still carrying the wounds of their service — with a free day of fishing on one of Gloucester’s iconic charter boats, the aptly named Yankee Freedom.

“We’re going again,” Orrell said Wednesday. “Same as last year.”

The fishing trip for veterans and their guests has become one of the city’s staples among July Fourth celebrations.

The lineup is a familiar one. There are parades, bonfires and fireworks. There are barbecues, ball games and trips to the beach.

And now there is the Yankee Freedom, which accommodates about 70 anglers, heading out from the Head of the Harbor on the morning of the Fourth for the recreational fishing grounds of the Atlantic.

The event has become almost as wildly popular as the “Wicked Tuna” fishing reality show that has made Marciano a celebrity, if not a star.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Offshore wind developers need workforce, ‘predictable’ regulations

June 27, 2018 — The budding Atlantic offshore wind industry needs a skilled workforce in the Northeast and a consistent federal approach to permitting and regulation, experts told members of Congress Tuesday.

The Northeast region alone aims to generate 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, said Stephen Pike, CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, who called it “a once in a lifetime opportunity to establish a new industry in the United States.”

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources was hearing testimony on legislation that would create a federally funded wind career training grant program, and to extend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act so the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management can offer wind energy leases off U.S. territories.

“Guam is a logical place to start looking,” Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, told Rep. Madeleine Bordallo, D-Guam, sponsor of the extension measure. Bordallo said offshore wind makes sense for the Pacific island where power is generated with expensive imported petroleum, and Luthi said several developers have expressed interest.

“We would be more than happy to work with the territories,” said James Bennett, who heads BOEM’s renewable energy program. As it has with states, the agency would start by creating task forces to identify potential lease areas and determine what kinds of studies are needed, he said.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

MASSACHUSETTS: Piping down on pollution

June 27, 2018 — The clock was ticking on the young crew from Seafood Sustainability on Tuesday, as they rushed to complete about 20 new fishing line collection containers that will be donated to Gloucester and other Cape Ann communities to install at docks and other high-volume boating and fishing areas.

The problem was that it was Tuesday and the St. Peter’s Fiesta was set to begin a mere 24 hours later. And Fiesta, as anyone knows who’s experienced it, tends to monopolize the time and focus of the Gloucester Harbormaster corps as the city’s water-borne population swells to huge numbers of revelers.

“We’re rushing as fast as we can,” Kate Christiansen, the project manager for Essex-based Seaside Sustainability’s “Reel In and Recycle” program, said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. “We’re in the process of building them right now and trying to get as much done as we can before Fiesta.”

Literally as Christiansen spoke, Josh Sheridan, Essex Sustainability’s marine science coordinator, led a team of three interns in an impromptu assembly line to transform 6-inch PVC piping — donated by the Building Center on the Gloucester waterfront — into monofilament collection containers.

Working in a backyard on Marchant Street in Gloucester, Ryan Keeth of Belmont, Jack McMahon of Hamilton and Sophia Guerriero of Essex toiled in the bright sunshine to complete the marked recovery units designed to mitigate the environmental pollution and navigational hazard of abandoned monofilament fishing line in oceans and other marine venues.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Artist Bob Lavoie salutes working waterfront in Fishing Heritage Center exhibit

June 27, 2018 — New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center’s latest exhibit, “Rigs, Hulls, and Wheelhouses: The Art of Bob Lavoie,” opens July 12, 6 p.m., and runs through Sept. 30.

Lavoie became acquainted with New Bedford’s working fishing boats when he began unloading vessels in high school. His time on the working docks continued while studying at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMass Dartmouth), where he earned degrees in graphic design and illustration. He fell in love with the aesthetics of the vessels — the colors, the machinery, the lines.

After a career spent as a graphic designer, illustrator, and art director at Hasbro in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Lavoie felt the need to begin to paint again. He began using the brilliant colors of gouache, a thick, opaque Italian watercolor. When deciding what his subject would be, he went back to something that meant a lot to him — the working fishing vessels of New Bedford and Galilee, Rhode Island.

“I’ve tried to paint them as they are — working boats with the rust, nets, blocks and confusing jumbles of lines that make them beautiful,” Lavoie said in a news release. “These working vessels are disappearing in some ports, being displaced by pristine yachts in the slips and multi-million dollar condos on the docks where once these proud working vessels sailed out into the Atlantic to bring in cod, haddock and scallops that made New England one of the primary fisheries in the world. These paintings are a small attempt to preserve a part of our New England heritage that is fast disappearing.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Warren challenger Lindstrom tours Gloucester’s fishing infrastructure

June 25, 2018 — The road to the state Republican Party nomination to run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren clearly runs through Gloucester.

At least it has in the past week, as two of three GOP candidates for the U.S. Senate have traveled to America’s Oldest Seaport to state their cases in advance of the September primary that will determine which Republican candidate lands on the ballot in November.

Thursday evening, state Rep. Geoff Diehl, who won the GOP endorsement at its April state convention, was here to unveil his plan to help the fishing industry.

On Saturday morning, first-time candidate Beth Lindstrom motored to Gloucester to tour the city’s iconic waterfront by water, visit some of the shoreside infrastructure for a firsthand look at the economic perils faced by commercial fishing stakeholders and take part in the blessing and christening of Intershell’s new surf clam boat, Bing Bing.

“Obviously, the fishing industry has shrunk and it’s really hard for these people to make a living,” Lindstrom said when asked what she took away from her tour. “I guess I didn’t really realize the extent of the problem.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

DON CUDDY: Late New Bedford scalloper never got justice he deserved

June 25, 2018 — It probably passed unnoticed by most people but an obituary for Larry Yacubian appeared in this newspaper on June 13. He died in Punta Gorda, Florida on May 18. But most fishermen still shake their heads when his name comes up. I don’t know if he died a bitter man. I hope not, although he had every reason to feel that way after the treatment meted out to him by federal law enforcement. Larry was a New Bedford scalloper and boat owner. In December 1998 his boat, the Independence, was boarded by the Coast Guard while fishing offshore and he was accused of fishing in a closed area. What followed can only be described, euphemistically, as a miscarriage of justice. The fines imposed on him by an administrative law judge working on behalf of NOAA were so excessive that he was forced to sell his boat, his permits and the Westport farm that had been in his wife’s family for 350 years — all of this to satisfy the greed of some ‘bad actors’ who considered themselves above the rule of law because they were carrying a badge. This particularly malicious prosecution ran Yacubian, a founder of the Fisheries Survival Fund, out of the fishing business and brought financial ruin on his family.

After a torturous legal process some justice was served when Yacubian was refunded $400,000 and received an apology in 2012 from NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke although that sum did not even cover his legal fees. But the details of this shakedown make exceptionally grisly reading. Yacubian’s case was just one of dozens, but by far the most egregious, uncovered by a special master appointed by the Department of Commerce to investigate excessive fines imposed on our commercial fishermen for relatively minor infractions. Thirteen of these originated from the Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester. Upholding justice was the proffered reason for assessing these fines but plain old money was the motivator. These huge fines went to swell the Asset Forfeiture Fund which allowed NOAA agents in the Office of Law Enforcement to purchase luxury vehicles and boats. It is all well-documented if anyone cares to look it up.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times