Saving Seafood

Feds move to vacate New England Wind permit as offshore wind rollback continues under Trump

September 3, 2025 — The federal government is now taking aim at New England Wind, asking a federal court to pause a lawsuit brought by island nonprofit ACK For Whales, saying it intends to seek remand and vacatur of the federal approval of the offshore wind project. It’s a move that, if granted, would effectively send the project back to square one and could make the case moot.

The announcement comes a week after the U.S. Department of Justice made a similar filing in the Town of Nantucket’s case against SouthCoast Wind. In that case, the DOJ asked the court to pause the suit while it reviewed SouthCoast’s permit.

Read the full article at The Inquirer and Mirror

MASSACHUSETTS: Dredging clears way for cleaner, bigger harbor

September 2, 2025 — Just north of Pope’s Island in the New Bedford Harbor, a giant, 12-acre pit sits at the bottom of the ocean, covered by layers of sand and rock. Filled with contaminated soil, the pit is meant to exist indefinitely, gradually collecting more sediment until it grows into a pronounced lump on the ocean floor.

The pit contains soil contaminated with PCBs, the manufacturing byproduct that has leaked into New Bedford’s seafood and prompted a decades-long federal cleanup effort.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Murphy, other Democratic governors call on Trump to uphold wind permits

September 2, 2025 — Democratic governors are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s plans to halt offshore wind developments.

“We are looking for the Trump Administration to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed,” said a statement issued Monday by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Trump has a deep, long-running dislike of wind farms he’s derided as ugly, bird-killing monstrosities. But his administration has moved more aggressively in recent weeks to restrict their construction, including by blocking projects from obtaining rural development business loans, halting construction of a nearly completed Ørsted A/S venture near Rhode Island and moving to invalidate the permit for another planned project off the Maryland coast.

Read the full article at Bloomberg News

New Study Reveals Dusky Sharks Preying On Seals For First Time Off Nantucket

August 29, 2025 — A new study confirms what scientists have known for years: dusky sharks are eating seals off the coast of Nantucket.

There are few known predators of seals in the Atlantic Ocean, but scientists can add one more to the list after a team of researchers captured what is believed to be the first aerial video showing a dusky shark killing and eating a grey seal near Nantucket.

“It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve been involved with as a shark scientist because it really changes the way we see this species,” said Megan Winton, a senior scientist at the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and the lead author of the study.

Two years ago, in July of 2023, boaters and beachgoers took photos and videos of sharks preying on seals off Great Point, and scientists later confirmed that the sharks in question were dusky sharks, not white sharks, as initially thought. This was notable because, until then, there was no evidence that dusky sharks ate seals.

One study from South Africa had found a seal in the stomach of a dusky shark, but at the time, scientists thought it was the result of a scavenging event, rather than part of the shark’s usual diet.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

When the Blade Breaks

August 26, 2025 — A charter boat fisherman was among the first to discover the wreckage — a “mess,” he called it, deep off the coast of Massachusetts. From behind a veil of pea soup-thick fog emerged hundreds of white and green fiberglass and Styrofoam pieces, some as small as a fingernail, some as large as a truck hood. By the following morning, the tide had carried the debris about 12 nautical miles and scattered it across Nantucket Island’s beaches. Residents woke to a shoreline covered in trash, fiberglass shards mixed in with seaweed and shells, waves thrusting flotsam onto the sand.

It did not take long to follow the breadcrumb trail to its source: Vineyard Wind, an offshore wind farm located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. On Saturday, July 13th, 2024, a nearly 115,000-pound blade broke from one of the turbines, shattered, and littered at least six truckloads’ worth of waste into the ocean.

The stakes for renewable energy advocates could not have been higher. Scientists, environmental groups, offshore wind developers, investors, and stakeholders from across the world had all been closely monitoring Vineyard Wind, which, with a planned 62 turbines, was on track to be the first large-scale commercial offshore wind farm in the United States. Dozens of other projects with contracts pending construction had hoped to glean insight from Vineyard Wind as a leading example. A disaster like this would put the nascent offshore wind industry under intense scrutiny and had the potential to throw future projects into jeopardy.

Read the full article at The Verge

US FDA recalls more shrimp after discovering radioactive contaminant

August 22, 2025 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced a voluntary recall of frozen shrimp products due to possible contamination with Cesium-137 (Cs-137), a man-made radioisotope that can elevate cancer risks through longer term, repeated low dose exposure.

The announcement comes shortly after U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP) detected Cs-137 in shipping containers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Houston, Savannah, and Miami, with agents finding evidence of the radioisotope in a single shipment of frozen bread shrimp. The discovery led the FDA to issue an alert for frozen shrimp supplied by Indonesia-based PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati to Walmart and sold under the “Great Value” brand name.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Work underway to expand New Bedford fishing wharf

August 22, 2025 — Work is progressing on a huge $44 million infrastructure project in New Bedford.

The Leonard’s Wharf right along the state pier will be expanding.

“It’s one of our most important infrastructure projects, that we kicked off earlier this year,” said Gordon Carr, the executive director of Port Authority. “We want to reconstruct and extend one of our largest fishing wharfs in the harbor.

Leonard’s Wharf has a long history in the city. In the 19th century it originally began as a whaling pier and then continued to expand into a large commercial fishing port.

Read the full article at NBC 10 NEWS

MASSACHUSETTS: Massachusetts commercial fisherman finds success at bottom of sea with new frozen dish

August 19, 2025 — The quality of seafood in New England is well-renowned across the country and the globe.

Now, a Massachusetts fisherman with almost half a century at sea has decided to combine his knowledge of one tasty item from the sea floor and produce a unique dinner item that you can buy in the frozen food section of your store.

“I make seafood pies with clam meat. And I make these clam dinners. Three different dinners,” said Capt. Al Rencurrel, the owner of Nantucket Sound Seafood, based in Fall River, Massachusetts.

For more than 40 years, Rencurrel has been dragging for clams in the waters surrounding Cape Cod and the Islands. He would then take his catch and sell it to seafood distributors. Three years ago, he decided to chart a new course for his clams and company when he started the frozen seafood dinner company.

Read the full article at WCVB

MASSACHSUETTS: Introducing the Scallopalooza festival in Massachusetts’ ‘scallop capital of the world’

August 18, 2025 — The following transcript is by WKU:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

New Bedford, Massachusetts, calls itself the scallop capital of the world, and on Thursday, the city celebrated Scallopalooza. It’s an event close to the city’s working waterfront that celebrates the Atlantic sea scallop and the people who work on the boats. Caroline Losneck has this audio postcard.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: So while we’re setting up for our scallop shucking contest, which is…

CAROLINE LOSNECK: Like most festivals, Scallopalooza’s fun, but scallops are serious business here. They’re central to the city’s identity and culture. The highlight is a raucous shucking contest where over a dozen local scallopers face off in heats, all up on a stage, to see who can remove the meat from the shell the cleanest and fastest. And spectators in the front rows probably even get some scallop parts on them as a memento.

JOE RITTER: We certainly hope people are going to have a shucking good time at this event.

LOSNECK: Joe Ritter works at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center and helped organize Scallopalooza.

RITTER: And the top fisherman from each round is going to go up in the finals, and they’re going to compete for the title of New Bedford’s best shucker. They’re going to get a trophy, and they’re going to get bragging rights, too.

LOSNECK: The impact of the species here is massive. About 80% of the seafood by value that arrives on the docks are from scallops.

RITTER: I would say scallops are to New Bedford like corn and soybeans are to Illinois or Indiana.

Lobstermen Seek Injunction to Fight a New Rule

August 14, 2025 — Since 1997, lobstermen along the Eastern seaboard have had to throw back lobsters with a “V-notch” — a triangular cut in the tail of an egg-bearing female that establishes it as uncatchable breed stock.

Until last month, the notch rules differed depending upon whether a fisherman had a federal permit or a state one. Federal permits allow lobstermen to fish farther offshore but have a tighter notch size restriction. Federal permit holders could harvest only lobsters with notches measuring 1/8-inch or less — the idea being that these lobsters had more time to grow, molt, and reproduce by the time they were taken. State permit holders could take lobsters with notches of up to ¼-inch.

As of July 1, an addendum to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) lobster management plan calls for the smaller notch size for all lobster permit holders.

The change is meant to expand protection of the spawning stock, according to the text of the addendum. The measure also seeks to “resolve discrepancies between the regulations for state and federal permit-holders,” the document says.

But the Outer Cape’s lobstermen who hold state permits say that the rollover to the federal permit holders’ rule should not apply to them. That’s the majority of lobstermen here: there are 64 commercial lobster permits issued to Outer Cape fishermen, and 41 are state-only permits, according to Julia Hopkins, a spokesperson for the Mass. Dept. of Fish & Game.

Outer Cape lobstermen say they worked out an exception years ago that promised them that V-notching would be optional for fishermen working in this area in exchange for their having a larger minimum size requirement. They say this was agreed with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission because it made for better conservation in local waters.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent