Saving Seafood

Massachusetts doubles offshore wind in power pipeline

December 20, 2021 — The amount of offshore wind power in the Massachusetts pipeline is poised to roughly double with the selection Friday of projects from both Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind to cumulatively generate 1,600 megawatts of cleaner power for the Bay State by the end of this decade.

A group of utility executives working with assistance from the Baker administration was seeking 1,600 MW more of offshore wind power but got just two bids that each maxed out at 1,200 MW and came only from the two developers already under contract to deliver offshore wind power to Massachusetts. So instead of picking just one 1,200 MW project, the group selected Vineyard Wind’s roughly 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind proposal and supplemented it with a 400 MW project offered by Mayflower Wind.

Both developers are already working on roughly 800 MW projects for Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind I, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the nation, is in the very early stages of construction and is due to come online by the end of 2023. Mayflower Wind’s initial 804 MW project just began its federal review process and is expected to be up and running in 2025.

“These projects will double the size of our current offshore wind procurements, they will deliver significant economic benefits to a number of coastal communities across the commonwealth, they include important provisions for diversity, equity and inclusion as well as benefits to environmental justice communities, and they invest significantly in the state while balancing protections with environmental resources including fisheries,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides told the News Service on Friday.

Read the full story at WGBH

 

Scallop prices soar

December 16, 2021 — The Christmas season demand for fresh seafood is giving another jolt to Atlantic sea scallop prices, with $37 to $38 prices reported for U12 product in Massachusetts and New Jersey ports this week.

The holiday peak comes on top of a year with tight supplies, as the scallop fleet and fishery managers wound down pressure on the resource. With the bounteous 2012-2013 class of scallops fading away, supplies will remain tight after the New England Fishery Management Council issued its specifications for the 2022 fishing year.

In New Bedford, the Buyers’ and Sellers Exchange (BASE) seafood auction reported a Dec. 15 price record of $37 per pound paid for U12 Great South Channel scallops landed by the F/V Furious. At Barnegat Light, N.J., scallop prices touched $38.

The new peaks come after a season when the industry bounced back from its covid-19 nightmare of 2020, when prices already were approaching $30 in spring 2021.

The New England Fishery Management Council finalized the 2022 fishing year plan during online meetings Dec. 7-9 and issued the complete decision Dec. 14 on its Amendment 34 changes.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Proposed cod cuts to cost Gloucester fleet

December 9, 2021 — To help rebuild what NOAA scientists say is a Georges Bank cod stock that is overfished, the New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday unanimously set new rules that would drastically reduce the cod catch in the fishing year 2022 that begins May 1. The cuts could cost the Gloucester fleet $1 million in revenue.

The council set limits on both commercial and recreational Georges Bank cod fisheries as it voted to pass along all components of so-called Framework 63 management measures to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which still has to approve this package of recommendations.

After several hours of debate and several back-and-forth amendments, the council declined to remand back to its Scientific and Statistical Committee its recommendations on a 57% lower acceptable biological catch of Georges Bank cod.

New England Fishery Management Council member Elizabeth “Libby” Etrie, program director of the fishing membership organization Northeast Service Sector, Inc. of Gloucester, appeared to have found a compromise position between a remand, which could have delayed the implementation of new fishing rules, and setting a 754 metric ton cod catch for three years, as the scientific panel had originally recommended.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Feds declare East Coast herring fishery a disaster

November 24, 2021 — US. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced a disaster declaration for the 2019 Atlantic herring fishery on Monday, Nov. 22.

“With this determination, we proudly support our fishing industry and will work with the affected communities to help them get back on track,” said Raimondo. “Resilient and sustainable fisheries are not only essential to our coastal communities, but play a vital role in supporting our blue economy and our nation’s overall economic wellbeing.”

The herring fishery historically supplied the bulk of the bait for the Northeast lobster fishery. In 2019, NMFS announced a 70 percent reduction in the catch quota, which left fishermen and bait suppliers scrambling for alternatives. The most complicating factor being that all bait species and types must be approved by NMFS. The herring fishery is based primarily in Maine and Massachusetts.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

As Vineyard Wind Moves Forward, Fishermen and Scientists Raise Questions About Impact

November 23, 2021 — The Biden administration has approved America’s first large-scale, offshore wind power project – Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. But for every supporter of the project, there are detractors raising questions. Lisa Fletcher looked at the pros and cons of ‘reaping the wind’ on “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”

Ms. Fletcher examined what the project could mean for New Bedford, Massachusetts, the nation’s top grossing fishing port, and its valuable scallop harvest, which averages around $400 million a year in landings.

“The amount of wind farms they’re proposing will displace fisheries,” said Ron Smolowitz, the owner of Coonamessett Farm in East Falmouth, Massachusetts and a former fishing captain who worked with NOAA. “The fish will adapt, the fishermen can adapt, but they’ll need funding.”

Mr. Smolowitz said that current funding proposed by Vineyard Wind to compensate fishermen for their losses is “nowhere near enough.” The proposed funding would average roughly $1 million a year over the 30-year life span of the project, Mr. Smolowitz said, while one scallop vessel alone can gross $2 million annually, and there are 342 scallop vessels. “And that’s just one fishery,” he said.

Ms. Fletcher also examined other obstacles for the project, including the potential threat to critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

“The industrial activity will increase shipping markedly both during the construction phase as well as during the maintenance phase,” said Mark Baumgartner, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Mr. Baumgartner said he and his team are working on deploying acoustic monitoring, with funding from Vineyard Wind, to help prevent ship strikes with right whales.

Watch the full story here

Work starting on 1st commercial-scale US offshore wind farm

November 19, 2021 — U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland joined with Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday to mark the groundbreaking of the Vineyard Wind 1 project, the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States.

The project is the first of many that will contribute to President Joe Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and to Massachusetts’ goal of 5.6 gigawatts by 2030, Haaland said at the event in the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod.

The first steps of construction will include laying down two transmission cables that will connect Vineyard Wind 1 to the mainland.

The commercial fishing industry has pushed back against the wind farm.

In September, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance — a coalition of commercial fishing groups — filed a legal challenge to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 project with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

The approval of the wind farm “adds unacceptable risk to this sustainable industry without any effort to minimize unreasonable interference with traditional and well-managed seafood production and navigation,” the group said at the time.

Read the full story at the AP

Northern Wind finalizes Legit Fish partnership, launching traceable scallops

November 18, 2021 — New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Northern Wind has announced a new partnership with Legit Fish that will enable the company to provide full-chain traceability for all of its domestically caught, Northern Atlantic scallops.

Starting Wednesday, 17 November, every case of Northern Wind scallops sourced from the Northeast U.S. scallop fishery will have third-party traceability of the products origin, harvest area, and landing-date – verifiable to government harvest records. Foodservice operators and consumers will be able to scan a QR code on the package to access information on the products, the company said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Biden Avoids Lawsuit After Restoring Marine Monument Protections

November 12, 2021 — The Biden administration will avoid a lawsuit filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court after reversing its predecessor’s decision to open protected waters to commercial fishing.

Conservation groups sued after former President Donald Trump opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to fishing. The monument is 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and it supports endangered whales and deep-sea corals.

2 years ago, lobsters started dying in their traps. Now scientists think they know why

November 10, 2021 — In September of 2019, Tracy Pugh started getting phone calls about dead lobsters.

Pugh is a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and a handful of fishermen in Cape Cod Bay were reporting traps full of dead lobsters — “anywhere from several dozen to hundreds,” she recalled. “So way, way more than normal.”

Some reported dead fish and crabs in their traps, as well. One trawler came up with a bunch of dead scallops.

Pugh, working with scientists at the Center for Coastal Studies, found the reason soon enough: a roughly six-mile stretch of water in Cape Cod Bay almost completely depleted of oxygen. “It was pretty bad,” said Pugh.

The hypoxic zone — or “blob,” as it became known — ambled around the sea floor for at least a week. Any animals that could swim or crawl away from the blob did, said Pugh. But those stuck in traps or unable to move, died.

The hypoxic zone dissipated in October of that year, but a new one appeared in 2020, around the same time and place. The blobs left behind a mystery: what caused them? And were they going to come back every year?

Read the full story at WBUR

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford is a shining sea of possibilities

November 10, 2021 — Stand here on Leonard’s Wharf, near where the Acushnet River empties into Buzzards Bay, and you’re surrounded by boats with colorful hulls and elaborate rigs. They help power the nation’s most lucrative fishing port, hauling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scallops, fish, and lobsters from the Atlantic Ocean to be sold worldwide.

Next door, behind a rusty chain-link fence, sits a huge old power plant, long unused. The 29-acre site is one of two on New Bedford’s waterfront that is poised to host the assembly of massive wind turbines that would be shipped out and mounted in the Atlantic Ocean, promising much-needed clean energy for the Northeast.

Whether these two industries — one ages old, the other being birthed on the fly — can coexist in New Bedford harbor and out in the ocean will say a lot about the future of one of the most distinctive places in Eastern Massachusetts, a city that has for most of its 234 years drawn a living from the sea.

“The waterfront has always provided an opportunity for people,” said Laura Orleans, executive director of the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, who has spent a quarter-century telling the stories of New Bedford’s maritime history. “There have been a lot of people from many different cultures who have been very successful making a living on our waterfront.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe