August 7, 2019 — The Center for Coastal Studies’ Marine Animal Entanglement Response Team freed an entangled minke whale last Thursday off Rockport and saved it from a great white shark.
The 18-foot whale was anchored by gear with rope through its mouth and around its tail.
The whale had a deep cut from the rope and minor bleeding had attracted a great white.
A video showing the extent of the entanglement can be viewed below.
August 7, 2019 — The forklifts didn’t stop for U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday afternoon when the congressman visited a Gloucester lobster wholesaler to talk about the challenges facing the Massachusetts lobster industry. But that didn’t seem to deter the congressman.
As Moulton toured the tank room and docks at the Cape Ann Lobstermen co-op in East Gloucester with co-owner Tessa Browne, the blur of activity continued, the constant beep-beep of forklifts serving as the soundtrack to the discussion on the double-squeeze facing the industry — expanded Chinese and European tariffs internationally and new protections for the North Atlantic right whales here at home.
Moulton asked Browne, who owns and operates the business with her husband Ryan, how much drag the tariffs have created for the lobster dealer. She quickly offered him a palpable example. Moving to the larger of the two lobster tanks, she explained how the bugs were stored by size.
August 7, 2019 — Manuela Barrett, a listener, wants to know more about how Vineyard Wind’s compensation plan to Rhode Island and Massachusetts fisherman is actually going to work?
First off, the compensation package assumes that the presence of wind farms will have an economic impact to commercial fishermen. That’s the basis of this entire compensation plan offered to both Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishermen. Both plans include an annual direct payout to fishermen for potential lost income because of the wind farms and also a supplemental trust fund dedicated to paying fishermen for unforeseen situations including damaged gear.
Let’s say, for example, a fisherman gets his net destroyed in the wind farm’s transmission cables. Vineyard Wind will use the money from the trust fund in order to pay for that damage.
The Rhode Island compensation plan for commercial fishermen has been finalized. That’s a $16.7 million plan. But the Massachusetts plan is still currently being reviewed by state regulators. Right now Vineyard Wind has proposed a $10 million compensation plan.
August 6, 2019 — The US Department of the Interior (DOI) had seemed poised to move forward with the environmental impact assessment (EIS) needed for Vineyard Wind to begin building the US’s first offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean as soon as this year.
The New Bedford, Massachusetts-based company, a joint venture between Avangrid, a division of the Spanish wind giant Iberdrola, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a Denmark-based investment firm with €6.8 billion ($7.6bn) under management, wants to erect more than 80 wind turbines that are 600-to-700-foot-tall – at least twice the height of the Statue of Liberty — in an 118 square mile stretch of the ocean starting some 15 miles from the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. It would contribute to America’s goal of reducing its dependence on fossil fuels by providing at least 400,000 New England homes and businesses with a combined 800 megawatts of power, while reducing carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year.
One problem: Citing concerns expressed by New England’s commercial fishing industry, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the US Department of Commerce — is not yet willing to give its blessing on the $2.8bn project’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS).
August 5, 2019 — With little fanfare, shark detection technology on Cape Cod took a small step forward last month off Newcomb Hollow Beach, the site of last year’s fatal shark attack on body boarder Arthur Medici.
Cape Cod and regional public safety officials have been hoping for years to employ a kind of souped-up version of what they already have, an acoustic receiver attached to a buoy that can not only detect signals from tagged great white sharks but relay an instantaneous alert to lifeguards and beach administrators.
One such device was deployed off Newcomb Hollow, state shark researcher Gregory Skomal said, and two more to be placed at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro and at Nauset Beach in Orleans.
August 5, 2019 — There have been more than 150 great white shark sightings since June off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a popular East Coast vacation spot, according to scientists.
This week alone, more than 20 great white shark sightings logged off the Cape, prompting three days of beach closures in a row beginning Tuesday.
The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s sharktivity app indicates that there have been more that 161 shark sightings off the coast of Massachusetts since June 1. The same shark can be spotted multiple times, scientists note.
August 5, 2019 — The nation’s first major offshore wind farm won a key approval from Rhode Island regulators in February, but only after stirring acrimony within the state’s fishing industry.
Now, amid an atmosphere of suspicion created by the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project, the next offshore wind proposal in line is being considered for a key approval by the state Coastal Resources Management Council. And there are concerns that the project, the South Fork Wind Farm, will lead to more difficulties for commercial fishermen who ply their trade in the waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.
Just like with Vineyard Wind, the potential complications arise from the orientation and spacing of the project’s turbines.
Developers Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy say that they’ve taken into account the concerns of fishermen by configuring the wind farm’s up to 15 turbines from east to west with rows that are 1 nautical mile (about 1.2 miles) apart. The spacing from north to south, however, would be smaller, with either 0.8 or 1 mile between turbines.
August 2, 2019 — All three federal agencies that weighed in on Vineyard Wind’s construction and operations plan have coalesced around the east-to-west orientation of the 84 wind turbines.
The three agencies are supporting a distance of at least 1 mile between the turbines, which is a marked contrast to the company’s diagonal layout plan with less space between, according to the Times review of 349 public comments on the draft environmental impact statement.
National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Administrator Michael Pentony faults the draft statement with failing to fully analyze current data showing “clear patterns of east-west orientation of fishing activity throughout much of the lease area.”
While an east-to-west turbine layout “would not fully eliminate impacts to fishing operations, available information suggests impacts would be minimized for some fishing vessels, allowing them to continue to fish the area and thus reducing the negative economic impacts they incur,” Pentony said.
August 2, 2019 — It is now legal to process raw, shell-on lobster parts in Massachusetts, the US’s second largest state for landings.
Charlie Baker, the state’s governor, on Wednesday signed the state’s $43.3 billion fiscal 2020 budget bill, which included a provision to end the decades-old prohibition, the Gloucester Daily Times reports.
Under the new measure, which went immediately into effect, wholesale seafood dealers licensed by the state’s Department of Public Health are permitted to process raw lobsters and import raw, shell-on lobster parts and tails. The change also allows for the retail sale of already-frozen raw, in-shell tails, the newspaper explains.
August 1, 2019 — Scientists have begun a new research program around Cape Cod in Massachusetts, focusing on movements and behavior of a growing great white shark population, to reduce the increasing potential for interactions with humans.
Atlantic white sharks are the center of attention in the frenetic Cape Cod summer tourism season, as the combined resurgence of their primary food source, gray seals, and the shark population plays out.
The shark season has been early and active, with numerous sightings and several temporary beach closings ordered as a result in July. It’s been just one year since two shark attacks off cape beaches resulted in the first recorded fatal shark attack in Massachusetts since 1936 when a body board rider was killed.
Instead the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the nonprofit Atlantic White Shark Conservancy based at Chatham, Mass. and other partners are in a new push to expand their study of white shark movements and behavior, with an emphasis on improving public safety in nearshore waters and channels where the animals hunt seals.