Saving Seafood

New tool maps birds, fish in offshore wind areas

September 23, 2021 — While federal and state officials eagerly pursue a rapid and significant deployment of offshore wind turbines to generate cleaner power along the East Coast, scientists and advocates on Wednesday unveiled a new mapping tool designed to give developers, regulators and the public a better sense of the natural resources below the surface in the neighborhood of proposed wind projects.

Last year, the U.S. offshore wind pipeline grew by 24 percent with more than 35,000 megawatts now in various stages of development, the U.S. Department of Energy said in its latest offshore wind market report. Massachusetts has authorized up to 5,600 MW and so far has contracted for about 1,600 MW of offshore wind power. But even before the first turbine is installed, the industry is facing headwinds from two federal lawsuits that focus on the protection of endangered species like the North Atlantic right whale and commercial fishing interests.

The marine mapping tool rolled out Wednesday by The Nature Conservancy covers the coast from Maine through North Carolina and includes information about the makeup of the seafloor, the fish and invertebrates that live near the bottom of the ocean in a given area, the marine mammals that frequent a chosen swath of ocean, the bird species that are known to be in the area and more. The tool allows a user to compare data from different times of the year and incorporates historical data as well.

Read the full story at WWLP

 

What’s behind one lawsuit against Vineyard Wind

September 21, 2021 — Annie Hawkins has a message you don’t hear very often in Massachusetts these days.

The executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a national group of fishing interests, Hawkins is questioning the rush to develop offshore wind. Her organization is suing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, alleging the agency is failing to protect the fishing industry as it races to develop the nation’s offshore wind potential to help address climate change.

“In taking action to address climate change, we have to acknowledge that these new uses [of the ocean] have a lot of environmental uncertainty. They have a lot of impacts of their own,” Hawkins said on The Codcast. “They can be better understood and minimized before we go whole hog on this 30 gigawatts tomorrow. A lot more upfront due diligence needs to be done.”

The 30 gigawatts reference refers to President Biden’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. It’s a goal that meshes with Gov. Charlie Baker’s push to develop 3.2 gigawatts by 2030. The Baker administration has already procured 1.6 gigawatts and is in the midst of reviewing proposals that would double that amount.

Read the full story at CommonWealth Magazine

 

New Bedford’s $2.3 Billion Vineyard Wind Project Fully Funded

September 16, 2021 — The $2.3 billion Vineyard Wind project off the Nantucket coast can officially begin, as the company announced the project’s financial close today.

Vineyard Wind 1 is slated to be the first commercial scale offshore wind farm in the U.S.

The project has hit some headwinds, after a coalition of fishing industry professionals filed a federal lawsuit Monday asking for a court review of the project’s approval by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management earlier this year.

But according to a release from the company, now that the project is fully funded, Vineyard Wind is able to give its contractors a notice to proceed.

This allows suppliers to start hiring, training and mobilizing people to prepare for both on and offshore construction.

Onshore work is set to begin this fall in Barnstable, with offshore work starting in 2022, the release stated.

The first power from Vineyard Wind 1 will be delivered to the grid in 2023.

Read the full story at WBSM

 

New Bedford Fishermen Among Those Suing Over Vineyard Wind

September 15, 2021 — Local fishermen are among those in a coalition of commercial fisheries suing the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management over its approval of the Vineyard Wind project.

More than 50 fishing vessels based in New Bedford and Fairhaven are listed as members of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, along with 13 Massachusetts-based businesses and associations.

The group filed a petition in federal court on Monday to review the agency’s approval of Vineyard Wind, a project slated to become the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm off the coast of Nantucket.

According to a statement from the coalition, fisheries professionals had been participating in the planning process for the 62-turbine project — but, the group said, their input was “summarily ignored by decision-makers.”

Read the full story at WBSM

 

Balance of power: BOEM and states look at compensation for fishermen; endangered whales pose challenge to developers

September 14, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is working with coastal states to come up with plans for potentially compensating fishermen for lost fishing grounds and other negative effects of developing offshore wind turbine arrays.

Fishing industry advocates are pushing anew to get fishermen deeply involved now to minimize impacts from sweeping plans to rapidly develop a U.S. offshore wind industry — and hoping to limit damage to the U.S. food supply.

The government’s drive toward creating more offshore wind energy areas in the New York Bight is looking like a repeat of its mistakes in planning southern New England projects and needs to be braked, fishermen said at an Aug. 6 meeting in New Bedford, Mass.

“It’s going to be responsible for the destruction of a centuries-old industry that’s only been feeding people,” Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told officials of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Fishing Industry Group Files Legal Challenge to Wind Farm

September 14, 2021 — A coalition of commercial fishing groups on Monday sued the federal agency that approved construction of a 62-turbine wind energy farm off the coast of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, saying it did not adequately take into account the project’s potential impact on the industry.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance’s petition for review of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 project was filed with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

“The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s hasty approval of this project, which could be the nation’s first commercial scale offshore wind installation, adds unacceptable risk to this sustainable industry without any effort to minimize unreasonable interference with traditional and well-managed seafood production and navigation,” the organization said in a statement.

The federal agency, in an emailed statement, said it had no comment.

A spokesperson for Vineyard Wind, a joint project of a Danish company and a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant, Iberdrola, said the company dies not comment on pending litigation.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News and World Report

 

Atlantic Herring Area 1A Days Out Meeting on September 24

September 10, 2021 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Members of the Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board from the states of Maine and New Hampshire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will meet via webinar on September 24, 2021 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., to discuss Season 2 (October 1 – December 31) days out measures for the 2021 Area 1A fishery (inshore Gulf of Maine). Days out measures include consecutive landings days for Season 2. The webinar and call information is included below:

Atlantic Herring Days Out Meeting

September 24, 2021

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

You can join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone at the following link: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/517895485. If you are new to GoToMeeting, you can download the app ahead of time (click here) and be ready before the meeting starts. For audio, the meeting will be using the computer voice over internet (VoIP), but if you are joining the webinar from your phone only, you can dial in at +1 (872) 240-3412 and enter access code   517-895-485 when prompted. The webinar will start at 9:30 a.m., 30 minutes early, to troubleshoot audio as necessary.

The 2021 Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (sub-ACL) is 1,453 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for the carryover from 2019, the 30 mt fixed gear set-aside, and the 8% buffer (Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL). There is no research-set-aside for 2021 because the participants in the RSA program will not continue their RSA project in 2021.

The Board established the following seasonal allocations for the 2021 Area 1A sub-ACL: 72.8% available from June 1 – September 30 and 27.2% available from October 1 – December 31.

Please contact Emilie Franke, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0716 or efranke@asmfc.org for more information; or visit http://www.asmfc.org/calendar/9/2021/Atlantic-Herring-Area-1A-Days-Out-Meeting-on-September-24/1797.

The meeting announcement can also be found at http://www.asmfc.org/files/AtlHerring/AtlHerringSep2021DaysOutMeetingNotice.pdf

MASSACHUSETTS: NPS provides $368k to Coastal Studies

September 8, 2021 — The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown has received $386,000 from the National Park Service and $75,000 the state of Massachusetts to establish a new Shark Ecology Research Program.

The foundation of the program is an ongoing study conducted by Bryan Legare, a seascape ecologist in the Center’s Marine Geology department.

Legare is examining the relationship between white shark behavior and habitat use in the shallow nearshore waters off the Cape Cod National Seashore to understand how sharks use the environment.

For the last three summers, Legare has deployed a dense array of acoustic receivers in a study area at Head of the Meadow beach in North Truro; he added a second array off Nauset Beach in 2020.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

 

Right Whale Conservation Groups ‘Disappointed’ By Long-Awaited Lobster Fishing Rules

September 2, 2021 — Federal officials have issued new regulations for the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries that are designed to protect North Atlantic right whales from entanglements in gear. But conservationists say the long-awaited rules don’t go far enough to save the critically endangered species.

The new regulations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) require lobstermen to add more traps per buoy line to reduce the number of vertical ropes in the water. They also restrict buoy lines in certain areas during seasonal whale migration south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and in the Gulf of Maine.

In addition, they require fishermen to make two significant changes to the ropes themselves: adding breakaway sections so that entangled whales can more easily break free, and markings to buoy lines to enable federal officials to differentiate gear by state.

Federal officials say the rules, which are four years in the making, will reduce the whales’ risk of death and serious injury by 69% — and more protections will be phased in over the next decade as part of a conservation framework.

But conservation groups say they wanted more aggressive measures, given the current status of the critically endangered whales. The population of North Atlantic right whales has declined sharply over the last few decades, and today an estimated 360 remain.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) was also critical of the new rules, saying that, in fact, the federal government has placed an “unwarranted burden” on the fishery.

“[The National Marine Fisheries Service] has mandated that Maine lobstermen reduce risk to right whales by an additional 98% over the next 10 years based on the worst-case scenario instead of using best available data and realistic assumptions,” said Maine Lobstermen’s Association executive director Patrice McCarron, “The final rule is just the first round of economic impacts to us, and future restrictions will likely destroy Maine’s iconic lobster fishery.”

The MLA takes issue with the size of the seasonal restricted area in the Gulf of Maine, a lack of “flexibility” for lobstermen to “innovate and propose equally protective yet less costly approaches,” and “last minute changes” to the gear marking requirements that they say could require lobstermen to purchase a second set of buoy lines.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

 

Trump adviser involved in Vineyard Wind opposition

August 30, 2021 — The two Nantucket women said they were suing the federal government because they wanted to save the North Atlantic right whale from offshore wind. Then a former member of President Trump’s EPA transition team stepped to the microphone to commend them for their bravery.

“They did it voluntarily,” David Stevenson, the former Trump adviser, said of the women. “They’re not getting anything out of this other than trying to save the whales, save Nantucket.”

So went a press conference outside the Massachusetts State House yesterday, where offshore wind critics announced a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s approval of Vineyard Wind, the first major offshore wind project in America to be issued an environmental permit.

The lawsuit marks a new chapter in a decadeslong push to build offshore wind farms in America. Cape Wind, the first offshore wind project proposed in the U.S. waters, was sunk by nearly two decades of legal battles. Now, the question is whether they will sink a second generation of projects.

Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine project 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, is the first to run the legal gauntlet. The $2.8 billion project is the only utility-scale offshore wind project to receive a final permit from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Other projects could soon follow. BOEM, as the bureau is known, has committed to reviewing 16 others along the Eastern Seaboard by the end of President Biden’s first term.

The lawsuit filed by Nantucket Residents Against Turbines in the U.S. District Court District of Massachusetts argues that the bureau failed to consider the impact of Vineyard Wind on right whales. It seeks to vacate the permit.

It’s not the first time opponents have challenged BOEM’s review of Vineyard Wind. That distinction belongs to a small-scale solar developer who owns a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard (Climatewire, July 20).

Read the full story at E&E News