Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: After A Hard Winter, Blessing Of The Fleet A Welcome Event

May 27, 2026 — It was a tough winter for the New England commercial fishing industry.

The Lily Jean out of Gloucester and the New Bedford-based Yankee Rose both sank with all hands. The impact was felt far behind the vessels’ home ports.

The local nonprofit Women of Fishing Families (WOFF) sent grocery and gas cards as well as care packages to the families of the fishermen who lost their lives.

“They had a lot of people depending on them,” said WOFF founding president Karen Murdoch. “We were lucky to be able to help these families because it affected fishing communities up and down the coast.”

WOFF will bring the town’s commercial fishing fleet together Sunday, May 31 for the annual Blessing of the Fleet to both acknowledge the winter’s difficulties and set the stage for a safe and successful fishing season.

Read the full article at The Cape Cod Chronicle 

MASSACHUSETTS: The Last Scallopers?

May 26, 2026 — As the sun rises on a crisp early fall morning on Nantucket, many islanders are still sound asleep in their beds, but scallopers are already waist-deep in the harbor, dragging their dredges across the harbor floor in hopes of a first good haul. The harbor is still, the air sharp with salt, and the faint diesel hum of working boats carries across the water. For Captain Bob DeCosta, the quiet ritual is more than a livelihood. It’s a family tradition that has spanned three generations. His father taught him how to fish in the ’70s, just as DeCosta now takes his own son out on the water.

“I can’t imagine not scalloping,” said DeCosta, who operates a charter fishing boat in the summer. “I enjoy getting up early in the morning, being on the water, watching the sun rise and the tranquility that comes with it. After a full summer charter, it’s very peaceful. It’s almost like I’m not even really working.”

But the fishery DeCosta inherited doesn’t look like the one his father knew. Two decades ago, 250 fishermen worked on a fleet of 100 boats. Today, the fleet has shrunk to 50-70 fishermen on 25-30 boats. It’s an expensive job with low returns: Rigging a boat is costly, while wholesale scallop prices remain stagnant at $12 to $14 a pound. “The winter scallop fishery is the last real struggle for commercial fishing on Nantucket,” DeCosta said. “We don’t have the market we used to have. It’s become more of a niche item, a specialty item than a more robust market.”

Scalloping is one of the island’s last ties to its working waterfront. Whaling has long vanished, but scalloping preserves a piece of the island’s maritime culture. “Once scalloping is gone, we’ll just be known as a destination for tourists. It won’t be known as a water-related community anymore,” DeCosta said. Nantucket’s bay scalloping industry is one of the last of its kind. Similar fisheries on Martha’s Vineyard and Long Island have dwindled to nearly nothing.

Read the full article at N Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: As harbor cleanup winds down, education around toxic seafood continues

May 22, 2026 — Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed the large-scale cleanup of New Bedford Harbor, removing dangerous chemicals called PCBs from the surface water and siloing the remaining toxic sediment in underground cells.

In an annual update on the cleanup Wednesday night, EPA remedial project manager Chris Kelly announced that today, PCB levels in both the Inner and Outer Harbor remain low, posing no threat to swimmers, kayakers, or beachgoers.

Just don’t eat the fish.

Despite ongoing education around the health risks of eating fish and shellfish caught in New Bedford Harbor, a recent survey conducted by the Community Economic Development Center found that over three-quarters of surveyed residents reported eating contaminated seafood caught in the harbor last year. More than half reported eating contaminated seafood at least once a month.

The EPA survey results didn’t come as a surprise since the majority of the 149 respondents said this was their first time taking the survey, said Aaron Sheehan, EPA community involvement coordinator.

“It’s all to say that there’s more education for us to do,” Sheehan said.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Port cities try to weather shifting winds

May 21, 2026 — Forty-Two Acres of vacant industrial land — a patchwork of asphalt, weeds, and grass — sit waiting in Salem’s harbor. In the center is a coal power plant, shut down in 2014 after a decade of community activism, and a natural gas plant, retired in 2018. The city identified the lot, roughly 30 football fields in size, to be the site for Salem’s offshore wind terminal, which would be the third in the state after the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal opened in 2015 and the city began its phased opening of the Foss Marine Terminal in 2023.

But strong political winds have, at least for now, changed the course for Salem.

For the city’s climate advocates, the prospective terminal represents decades of work toward a cleaner, renewable energy future, one that the state has been putting money and policy behind for years and that has promised to bring thousands of jobs and other community investments. Salem and New Bedford both received millions from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) to develop the sites of retired fossil fuel power plants into terminals that would serve as logistics and operations centers for the construction of offshore wind. But wind projects have long been struggling to get off the ground. During the Biden administration, global supply chain disruption, climbing inflation, and high interest rates drove up costs for developers. The Trump administration’s anti-wind actions — issuing executive orders that block new projects, pausing existing leases, and rescinding grants — drove both cities further from the economic boon they expected.

In New Bedford, the influx of tenants that was hoped for never materialized. In Salem, the plan was to build two berths to receive ships carrying crew and materials for wind projects. But construction is stalled and there’s no start date in sight.

“We expected a lot of jobs, like a lot of life-changing … career sustainable jobs that were going to come from this, and that’s what hasn’t materialized,” said Sam Lambert, deputy chapter director for the Sierra Club’s Massachusetts’ chapter, of the Salem terminal and the offshore wind projects it might have supported.

In New Bedford, the terminal has had to shift its vision. It’s leaning on general cargo and marine construction for additional revenue.

“We were operating under a plan where, when the first [wind farm] gets first electricity, it would start doing its operation and maintenance work out of our facility,” said Andrew Saunders, president of the New Bedford Foss Marine Terminal. But with the current political climate, “the terminal has had to pivot in order to generate revenue, and figure out something of a different identity.”

Read the full article at Commonwealth Beacon

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fishing industry sees impact of rising fuel costs

May 18, 2026 –At Sea Fuels Marine, located at 101 Co Op Wharf in New Bedford, General Manager Paul Anthony said he hasn’t witnessed such a rise in the cost of diesel fuel in a long time.

It seems like every time it’s brought up in the news, the fuel price jumps, he said.

“Who knows how long it will take to level out. I honestly don’t know. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve never seen it like this, and there have been times there were spikes including during the Gulf War, the pandemic and the Ukraine war with Russia,” he said.

According to AAA, as of May 17 the price of diesel fuel is at $5.79 per gallon. A year ago, it was $3.76 per gallon.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Massachusetts lobsterman beats local red tape: ‘He preserves … Cape Cod’s identity’

May 18, 2026 — The Yarmouth Zoning Board of Appeals has approved a special permit for resident Jon Tolley to reopen his shop at his home this summer. A year ago, the board forced him to operate elsewhere despite a decades-long record of no complaints from his neighbors.

“I am glad that everything finally went that way, except it has cost me quite a bit of money to (fight) this,” Tolley told the Herald on Saturday, after the ZBA approval. He said he will have to wait about 20 days to secure the permit in hand.

Resident Cheryl Ball, founder of “Cape Cod Concerned Citizens,” an advocacy group that fights for regulations that maintain the region’s culture, said she applauds Yarmouth for “making the right decision.”

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Mass. Gov. Healey asks US Navy to help with investigation into sunken Gloucester fishing vessel

May 15, 2026 — Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is asking the United States Navy to assist in the ongoing investigation into the sinking of the “Lily Jean” fishing vessel off Gloucester earlier this year.

n a letter sent this week alongside State Sen. Bruce Tarr to Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, Healey requested the Navy’s help in retrieving key equipment from the wreck that could provide critical insight into what caused the vessel to sink.

“Officials from the Massachusetts State Police have received information suggesting that a video recorder and hard drive installed on the F/V Lily Jean remain intact, with the potential to provide essential details in the immediate moments before the ship was lost,” the letter reads. “The company that installed the technology believes the video captured is retrievable. Importantly, this video would assist the NTSB in providing safety recommendations to prevent future maritime disasters.”

MASSACHUSETTS: Healey asks Navy’s help in recovering video that could show sunken fishing ship’s last moments

May 14, 2026 — Massachusetts officials are asking for the U.S. Navy’s help in recovering a piece of equipment from the fishing vessel that sunk off the coast of Gloucester earlier this year, believing the video it contains could shed light on what caused the ship to go down.

Seven people, including the ship’s captain and crew and a fisheries observer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, died when the Lily Jean sank on Jan. 30 without sending any distress or mayday call beforehand.

Gov. Maura Healey and state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, wrote Monday to U.S. Navy Secretary Hung Cao, requesting help “to uncover all facts related to this incident and bring closure to the families of the F/V Lily Jean while improving safety for those who chose to carry on this beloved tradition in the future.”

“Massachusetts has a long, proud history of seafaring thanks to generations of men and women who risk their lives fishing off our coast and in the North Atlantic,” Healey and Tarr said in their letter.

Healey and Tarr said officials in the Massachusetts State Police received information suggesting that a video recorder and hard drive on the ship remain intact, and that the company that installed the equipment believes the video is retrievable.

Read the full article at WGBH

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford exhibit explores fishing’s complex history

May 14, 2026 — A new exhibit exploring the complex history of federal fisheries management is scheduled to open May 14 at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center.

Titled “In History’s Wake,” the exhibit examines the legacy of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, according to a community announcement. The law established the 200-mile limit that pushed out foreign factory ships and laid the groundwork for much of the governance and oversight that manages the commercial fishing industry today.

The exhibit will be on display through spring 2027.

The exhibit goes beyond a look at the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s legislative history, examining the evolution of the industry and the often-challenging relationship between commercial fishermen, the state and federal government, environmentalists, and scientists, according to the announcement.

Read the full article at AOL