Saving Seafood

Judge grants BOEM request to reconsider key permit for SouthCoast Wind

November 5, 2025 –A judge on Tuesday granted a federal agency’s request to remand a key permit that it had given in January to SouthCoast Wind, an offshore wind project planned off the Massachusetts coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior Department agency that manages offshore wind development, in September asked a judge for a remand so that it can reconsider its approval, which greenlit project construction for up to 147 turbines south of Nantucket and Vineyard Wind.

BOEM is effectively re-opening the review, which started in 2021 and lasted years, citing President Donald Trump’s day-one wind memo directing the Interior Department to carry out a “comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”

The agency could ultimately decide to revoke the SouthCoast Wind permit, or require new conditions for the developer to meet to receive approval.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

New Bedford agency, researchers to study commercial fishing within wind farm

November 5, 2025 — In the years leading up to the installation of the first turbine off the coast of Massachusetts, government officials, scientists and fishermen convened in conference rooms and Zoom calls to discuss and debate what the fishing industry’s future could — and would —  look like amid grids of steel towers.

An oft-uttered phrase was “coexistence” — a realistic goal to those backing offshore wind development, but a laughable suggestion to some fishermen. Accepting there would be impacts, other terms like mitigation and financial compensation peppered the conversations — tools to address effects on fishermen who will tow in and around the arrays as they’re erected, and once they’re operational.

Now, with more than 120 towers standing off the New England coast as of this month, the stakeholders involved can finally put their hopes, doubts, and hypotheses to the test.

The New Bedford Port Authority and UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) are partnering up for the first of its kind study in the U.S. that will measure how commercial fishing boats and their varied gear — dredges, pots, trawls, and so on — behave and operate within wind farms. The collected data, they say, can answer some unanswered questions, and inform how coexistence between the two industries can be achieved or improved.

“This project gives us the opportunity to address one of the major uncertainties in managing the interaction of offshore wind farms and fisheries,” said Steven Cadrin, professor of fisheries oceanography at SMAST.

The research project is funded by a $420,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and comes at a time when other studies that would have examined offshore wind’s impacts on commercially fished species and other marine interests, like whales, have been terminated by the federal government.

The final details have not been ironed out, but the testing may be conducted within Vineyard Wind or Revolution Wind (both projects have 80% to 90% of their turbines installed).

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Awaits CDC Study of Offshore Wind Industry Impact

November 5, 2025 — There is potentially a lot at stake for the City of New Bedford, its rich fishing industry, and offshore wind power development. While some believe fishing and support for offshore wind can coexist in the same port city, others are not so sure.

Kennedy Calls for Federal Review

Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the potential harms of offshore wind farms, some proposed and some under construction off the coast of Massachusetts and elsewhere in the Northeast.

Read the full article at WBSM

Trump Can Reconsider Permit for Offshore Wind Farm, Judge Rules

November 5, 2025 — A federal judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may reconsider the Biden-era approval of SouthCoast Wind, a wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket, Mass.

The decision dealt a setback to the developers of the project, a joint venture between the energy companies EDP Renewables and ENGIE. And it handed a victory to the White House, which has ordered a half-dozen federal agencies to draft plans to thwart offshore wind power, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the project developers would not “suffer immediate and significant hardship” if the Trump administration were allowed to reconsider the permit.

The decision would effectively allow the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to re-evaluate its approval of the project’s construction and operations plan. The agency had approved the plan on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Mr. Trump’s second term began.

Read the full article at The New York Times

New England lobster populations fall amid overfishing

November 4, 2025 — Overfishing of American lobster is occurring in New England’s most productive fishing areas off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts, contributing to a 34 percent population drop since the last assessment in 2020, regulators found in a new report.

The findings, released Thursday by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, will not result in an immediate change of lobster management, officials said. But they point to a broader concern around the viability of New England lobster, which are declining at an ever-faster rate across their traditional cold-water habitat.

Maine, which produces 93 percent of the nation’s lobster, saw a record-low harvest of 86 million pounds in 2024, according to state data, down 35 percent from 2016 when fishermen hauled in a record 132 million pounds of lobster. Massachusetts has seen comparable drops, while lobster harvests in southern New England have seen the steepest declines.

Read the full article at E&E News

UMassD-SMAST partners with New Bedford Port Authority to study the effects of wind energy areas on commercial fishing operations

November 3, 2025 — The UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) is partnering with the New Bedford Port Authority on a project titled “Tracking and Modeling the Behavior and Position of Fishing Vessels and Their Towed Gears in Wind Energy Areas.” The project is funded by a $419,462 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC).

The study will examine how commercial fishing vessels and gear operate within and around offshore wind energy areas to better understand potential impacts and identify ways to support safe, sustainable coexistence between the fishing and wind industries.

SMAST was selected as a key partner for its longstanding reputation in collaborative fisheries research and its strong connections to the commercial fishing community as well as its leadership in studying the impacts of wind farms on fisheries. Together, SMAST and the NBPA will combine practical experience and scientific analysis to help shape offshore wind development that supports both economic growth and ocean sustainability.

Read the full article at UMass Dartmouth

Lobster populations off New England coast are declining, report shows

October 31, 2025 — Lobster populations off the coast of New England have dropped 34 percent since 2018, according to a new report from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The findings are raising fresh questions about the long-term outlook for Maine’s lobster industry.

Off the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, the commission said the current population is at 201 million lobsters, which is below the target of 229 million but still comfortably above the “depleted” threshold of 143 million. That means the stock is not considered depleted, but the decline is notable.

“The number of lobsters in the population has gone down since the last assessment,” said Caitlin Starks, senior coordinator for the commission’s Fishery Management Plan. “Overfishing is occurring, but just barely.”

Read the full article at News Center Maine

Lobster Population Falls off New England, Leading Regulators to Declare Overfishing

October 31, 2025 — A new report says America’s lobsters, which have been in decline since 2018, are now being overfished off New England.

The stock has declined by 34% since that year in its most important fishing grounds, the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said Thursday. The commission said it now considers overfishing of the species to be occurring, and that could bring new management measures that restrict fishermen from catching them in the future.

But the lobster population has shown “rapid declines in abundance in recent years,” the commission said in a statement.

The assessment said the decline and overfishing were taking place in fishing areas off Maine and Massachusetts where most lobster fishing takes place. The assessment also considered the southern New England lobster stock, which it said has been depleted for years and remains so.

Read the full article at U.S. News

Herring count shows more work needed to boost population

October 30, 2025 — Twenty years ago, Massachusetts banned harvesting river herring in an attempt to protect alewife and blueback herring.

Last year the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission released a stock assessment that determined herring populations are stable throughout the coast, including Massachusetts.

Mike Palmer coordinates an annual spring herring count for the Association to Preserve Cape Cod. He said we need to be doing more to help the population rebound.

Palmer said the spring 2025 count showed below-average returns on the Cape. Since then, continuing drought conditions have been tough on river herring that require sufficient river flows to return to the ocean in the fall.

Read the full article at CAI

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford State Pier businesses to be displaced. Repairs could take up to 4 years.

October 28, 2025 — The state will close State Pier’s south wharf and most of the east wharf within weeks for significant repairs that will cause the displacement of virtually all water-dependent businesses. Repairs could take up to four years.

However, MassDevelopment President and CEO Navjeet Bal said the agency is working on short-term options with Seastreak Ferries and Cuttyhunk Ferry to be able to maintain some level of operations from the pier.

There is a space that’s safe and it’s hoped they can be supported from there, Bal said. Seastreak is currently closed for the season.

Why is the pier closure happening?

Bal said an engineering review of the pier found that the south wharf and most of the east wharf required significant repairs or replacement, necessitating the closure within weeks.

She noted that the north wharf has been closed since 2019 because of needed repairs, and MassDevelopment will be soliciting reconstruction bids for it in the near future.

Read the full article at the Standard-Times