December 8, 2025 — NOAA Fisheries has announced two new slow zones for right whales, including Cape Cod Bay. The restrictions are in place through December 20th after the whales were discovered last Friday. The other slow zone is east of Ocean City, Maryland, using a buoy that was operated partly by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. […] The post NOAA Fisheries implements slow zone after right whale detection in Cape Cod Bay appeared first on CapeCod.com.
MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen months on, Vineyard Wind blade break investigation isn’t done
December 4, 2025 — Sixty-two towers. Sixty-two nacelles. One-hundred eighty-six blades.
Those are the pieces that comprise Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore wind project nearing completion after more than two years of construction.
By The Light’s accounting, the project has two towers and two nacelles left to ship out from the Port of New Bedford. That leaves the blades — an estimated 33 of which, as of last month, have yet to top some turbines, and an unknown number that may still need to be removed and replaced.
As batches of blades have traveled across the seas, to and from New Bedford, France, and Nova Scotia, and been installed on turbines, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has continued to investigate what caused one of the blades to fail in July 2024.
In January 2025, the Biden administration ordered Vineyard Wind to remove all blades manufactured at a factory in Gaspé, Quebec, where the broken blade was built. BSEE gave Vineyard Wind permission to finish construction using blades from a different factory in Cherbourg, France.
Trump administration moves to revoke key permit from another offshore wind project proposed near Mass.
December 4, 2025 — More than a year after the Biden administration issued the final permit for a pair of proposed offshore wind projects near Massachusetts, the Trump administration is trying to take it back.
On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to “remand,” or reconsider, its approval of the construction and operations plan for the projects, New England Wind 1 and 2. The plan is the last major permit an offshore wind project needs to begin construction.
The motion is the latest move by the Trump administration to target the offshore wind industry in the U.S., and it comes just a few weeks after a federal judge in a different, but similar, case ruled that the government could take a second look at the construction and operations plan it approved for SouthCoast Wind, a proposed wind project also near Massachusetts.
The federal government’s motion to reconsider New England Wind’s permit says its prior approval “may have” failed to account for all of the project’s impacts. The filing cited a relatively new interpretation of the federal law known as the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that changes the criteria to evaluate offshore wind projects.
“Agencies have inherent authority to reconsider past decisions and to revise or replace them,” the government’s lawyers wrote.
But Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, said this is not how the permitting process is supposed to work.
BOEM to consider revoking New England Wind 1 approval
December 3, 2025 — The federal agency regulating offshore wind development asked a federal judge on Tuesday to allow it to reconsider a key approval — one the same agency granted just last year — for New England Wind 1, a project planned off the Massachusetts coast.
If the federal government’s request is granted, it would be a blow to the project, which plans to invest in New Bedford and use the city for long-term project operations. If the approval stands, the project could move toward construction once it secures a power purchase agreement with the commonwealth.
This is at least the third time the administration has sought a remand of an offshore wind project approval, the others being for SouthCoast Wind and Maryland’s US Wind. The permits give major infrastructure projects the certainty to secure financing and move forward with construction.
The filing comes more than two months after the federal government signaled it would take such action against this project. The remand request was expected sooner, but the weekslong government shutdown pushed the deadline.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed the motion as part of a lawsuit brought in May by offshore wind opposition group ACK for Whales and other parties, including the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, against BOEM and the Interior Department’s approval of New England Wind 1.
Striped Bass are Struggling; UMass Amherst Biologists Know How to Help
December 2, 2025 — While there are only four official seasons in the year, anglers in the Northeast recognize a fifth: striper season, the months from May to November when striped bass, which can grow up to 100 pounds and are renowned for their fight once hooked, migrate along the coastal waters between the Chesapeake and Canadian Maritimes within range of thousands of fishing lures. But the fishery, which generated approximately $13 billion in economic activity along the Eastern seaboard in 2016, is crashing, despite the fact that the vast majority of bass caught by recreational anglers are released back into the ocean.
A pair of recent papers, led by biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published in Fisheries Research and Marine and Coastal Fisheries, sought to comprehensively pinpoint which catch-and-release fishing practices pose a considerable risk to striped bass, and to show that there’s a mismatch between what anglers know about catch-and-release best practices and how this knowledge translates into action once on the water.
MASSACHUSETTS: It’s Time to Release Massachusetts Fishermen from Red Tape
November 26, 2025 — The following was released by the U.S. Small Business Administration:
Faced with burdensome red tape brought on by bad trade deals, foreign-owned wind farms, and unfair cost-sharing programs, the American fishing industry finds itself struggling to put food on the table for fishermen and for Americans across the country.
In October, Chief Counsel for Advocacy Casey B. Mulligan had the opportunity to visit with independent fishermen from New Bedford and Gloucester, Massachusetts. He raised their concerns with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is a part of the executive branch that has especially burdened the fishing industry with unnecessary restrictions and excessive compliance costs.
Chief Counsel Mulligan also testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship last week to highlight needed reforms. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, ranking member on the committee, was unable to attend. Chief Counsel Mulligan regrets the missed opportunity to discuss the important regulatory reform needed to unburden small fishing businesses.
“In my confirmation hearing, I pledged to visit small businesses where they are,” said Mulligan. “Today, I am committing to do just that in New Bedford, MA, because the input of small fishing businesses is too urgent to put off for another day. We have extended an invitation to Senator Markey to join us, and I hope that together we can find adequate regulatory relief.”
Facing dwindling resources, scallopers revisit controversial permit stacking proposal
November 25, 2025 — To walk down New Bedford’s Pier 3 is to view a time capsule of the historic fishing town, memorialized not just by plaques and monuments but by the decades-old, rusted trawlers parked stern to stern on the cramped commercial harbor.
By design, these boats spend more time tied up at the docks than they do on the open ocean. Some scallopers are trying to put them back on the water.
In October, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell penned a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expressing early support for the new proposal to allow permit-stacking in scallop fisheries.
“Even the casual observer can’t help but notice that we have lots of boats in the dock,” Mitchell told The Light in an interview. “It’s pretty crowded, and so people wonder, ‘Well, why are they all there?’ Part of the answer is, ‘Well, they don’t fish all that much.’”
Mitchell’s endorsement of scallop permit-stacking contrasts with his position on a similar question three years ago.
In 2022, the New England Fisheries Management Council overwhelmingly struck down a similar proposal that would have allowed scallop permit holders to lease their scalloping permits to other vessel owners, essentially “stacking” multiple permits on a temporary basis.
NOAA Fisheries report shows large whale entanglements nationwide up in 2024; 3 occurred in Maine
November 24, 2025 — According to a new annual report from NOAA Fisheries, there were 95 total confirmed large whale entanglements nationwide last year. In the Northeast Atlantic, the majority of entanglements were reported in Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay. Three occurred off the coast of Maine.
NOAA spokesperson Andrea Gomez says that two of those three whales were humpbacks, and one was a minke. One of the humpbacks was found dead outside of Portland, entangled in a fishing net. The other humpback and the minke were found alive off Jonesport and Stonington, entangled in Maine lobster gear. The minke was able to shed the gear on its own, and Maine Marine Patrol was able to disentangle the humpback.
Directed Atlantic Herring Area 1A Fishery Closure Effective 6 PM, November 24, 2025
November 24, 2025 — The following was released by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
NOAA Fisheries and the states of Maine and New Hampshire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts project the Atlantic herring fishery will catch 92% of the Area 1A sub-annual catch limit by November 24, 2025. The Area 1A directed fishery will close effective 6:00 p.m. on November 24, 2025 and remain closed until further notice. Vessels that have entered port before 6:00 p.m. on November 24, 2025 may land and sell, from that trip, greater than 2,000 pounds of herring from Area 1A.
During a closure, vessels participating in other fisheries may retain and land an incidental catch of herring that does not exceed 2,000 pounds per trip or calendar day. In addition, directed herring vessels traveling through Area 1A must have all fishing gear stowed.
For more information, please contact Emilie Franke, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0716 or efranke@asmfc.org.
The announcement can also be found at https://asmfc.org/news/
Lobster boats must keep using tracking devices for government observation, court rules
November 21, 2025 — The U.S. government can continue requiring America’s lobster fishing boats to use electronic tracking devices to collect data, a federal appeals court has ruled, denying claims by some in the industry that the monitoring amounts to unreasonable search and seizure.
Fishing regulators began requiring federally permitted lobstermen to install electronic tracking devices that transmit location data in late 2023. The data improves understanding of the lobster population and can inform future rules, authorities said.
The tracking devices transmit lobster boat locations using an onboard global positioning system and must be used whenever a vessel is in the water, including when it’s docked or being operated for personal use, court records state.
A group of lobster fishermen sued, claiming the tracking requirements are unconstitutional, but a federal district court rejected that claim and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston upheld the ruling Tuesday.
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