Saving Seafood

The Vineyard Wind approval could usher in the first wave of offshore projects

May 14, 2021 — The Biden administration greenlit the first large-scale offshore wind project this month in a move that could help jumpstart an industry that thus far has been stagnant in the United States.

It’s a small first step toward meeting a goal President Joe Biden set in March for the U.S. to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, but the country has a long way to go. Currently, the U.S. only has two small-scale pilot offshore wind projects in operation, one off the coast of Rhode Island and the other off the coast of Virginia, totaling about 42 megawatts of power.

Nonetheless, renewable energy advocates and energy analysts say the approval of the first large-scale project is a significant milestone for the offshore wind industry.

“It will facilitate the first wave of significant projects,” said Laura Morton, the senior director of offshore policy and regulatory affairs for the American Clean Power Association.

Read the full story at The Washington Examiner

Biden administration clears way for Vineyard Wind

May 12, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued its record of decision Tuesday, May 11, approving the Vineyard Wind offshore energy project. The decision is a bellwether event that could trigger a wave of domestic investment in wind power equipment and shipbuilding. Fishing industry advocates worry that it sets the stage for privatizing the public resource on which their livelihoods rely.

“BOEM continues to abdicate its responsibility to the public and leave all decision making to large, multinational corporations, including this decision which includes effectively no mitigation measures to offset impacts to critical ocean ecosystems and commercial fisheries,” said the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance in a statement. “To the best of our knowledge BOEM did not even consider any mitigation measures recommended by RODA or any fisheries professionals, scientists, or natural resource managers, despite having clearly defined requests available to them.”

The record of decision is an interagency document for permitting by BOEM, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Vineyard Wind developers Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners next must submit a facility design report and a fabrication and installation report detailing details for how the 800-megawatt, $2.8 billion turbine array “will be fabricated and installed in accordance with the approved Construction and Operations Plan,” according to the announcement from the Department of Interior.

The decision hews to the agency preferred alternative of a grid layout of 62 turbines spaced at 1-nautical-mile intervals. Commercial fishermen, led by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, had advocated 4-nm-wide vessel transit lanes, which they contend would enhance safety.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden administration grants Vineyard Wind its final major permit

May 12, 2021 — After two decades of false starts and lengthy delays, Massachusetts is poised to get the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm with the approval Tuesday by the Biden administration of a massive energy project in federal waters some 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The decision is an important milestone for the Biden administration’s effort to battle climate change by moving the nation’s energy policy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources. It is also validation of a push for wind power that started in Massachusetts some 20 years ago with the Cape Wind project that was proposed for waters in Nantucket Sound and eventually collapsed in the face of stiff opposition.

The Vineyard Wind project approved Tuesday would generate up to 800 megawatts of electricity from 62 giant turbines, enough to power at least 400,000 homes. Construction is expected to begin before the end of the year, once the developers have secured financing for the nearly $3 billion project. They hope to be generating electricity from a portion of the project by late 2023, with construction ending the following year.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Biden administration approval of Vineyard Wind project panned by fishing groups

May 12, 2021 — Despite objections coming from U.S. fishing industry, the Biden administration on Tuesday, 11 May announced the approval of the country’s first large-scale offshore wind energy development project.

According to a statement from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project will include no more than 84 turbines off the coast of Massachusetts.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

RODA Condemns Administration for Putting Goals Ahead of Fishermen Safety

May 12, 2021 — Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, condemns in the strongest possible terms the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) issuance of a Record of Decision for the previously terminated Vineyard Wind 1 Offshore Wind Energy Project. BOEM continues to abdicate its responsibility to the public and leave all decision making to large, multinational corporations, including this Decision which includes effectively no mitigation measures to offset impacts to critical ocean ecosystems and commercial fisheries.

It has only included one such measure: a voluntary and non-enforceable suggestion for developers to cooperate with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to mitigate what the Final Environmental Impact Statement characterizes as “major” impacts to scientific research. Oddly, BOEM directs Vineyard Wind to “participate in good faith” in the undescribed and unfunded Federal Survey Mitigation Program, which “may lessen long-term impacts” (but “may not” reduce the significant short term impacts). Mitigation that is poorly defined, unrequired, and unmonitored satisfies neither the public interest nor the law.

To the best of our knowledge BOEM did not even consider any mitigation measures recommended by RODA or any fisheries professionals, scientists, or natural resource managers, despite having clearly defined requests available to them.

In one pen stroke, BOEM has confirmed its scattershot, partisan, and opaque approach that undermines every lesson we’ve learned throughout environmental history: the precautionary principle, the importance of safety and environmental regulation, the scientific method and use of the best available data, and adaptive management policies. It is shocking that NMFS could sign off on a decision so inexplicably adverse to its core mission and the research, resources, businesses, and citizens under its jurisdiction.

Read the full story at OCNJ Daily

RESPONSIBLE OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE: Offshore shutout

May 11, 2021 — The following is excerpted from an April 13 letter to BOEM’s New York Bight offshore wind task force in advance of meetings: 

Major fishing community leaders are sitting out on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Task Force meeting this week (April 13, 2021). As BOEM prepares to auction nearly 1,300 square miles of the most valuable fishery grounds on the East Coast, Task Force members must act as responsible administrators of the public trust. Fishermen have shown up for years to “engage” in processes where spatial constraints and, often, the actors themselves are opposed to their livelihood. They have urgently advocated for the survival of their family and communities, in a context where all the rules are set (and changed) by newcomers interested only in a large-scale ocean acquisition who often don’t even treat them with common courtesy or basic respect.

This time and effort has resulted in effectively no accommodations to mitigate impacts from individual developers or the supposedly unbiased federal and state governments. Individuals from the fishing community care deeply, but the deck is so stacked that they are exhausted and even traumatized by this relentless assault on their worth and expertise.

This meeting boycott is not because fishermen do not wish to be involved in decisions and research efforts about offshore wind — they’ve repeatedly come to the table in good faith. These responsible leaders actively engage in fisheries management processes, partner with environmental nonprofit organizations and government agencies, participate in seafood certification and environmental programs, conduct cooperative research to improve fisheries management, provide platforms for scientific research about ecosystem health and climate change, hold positions of authority within their own communities, donate seafood and services to civic charities, work through a pandemic to ensure U.S. food security, employ large numbers of environmental justice populations, and more… For every time they try to actively participate, there is a new roadblock thrown up in processes that is entirely controlled by those opposed to their interests, in which the overall structure has left no room for them to receive any compromise.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

Biden administration approves major offshore wind project

May 11, 2021 — The Biden administration on Tuesday announced that it has approved construction of what it described as the first large-scale offshore wind project in the country.

The Vineyard Wind project, which will consist of up to 84 wind turbines, is expected to be able to produce enough energy to power more than 400,000 homes, the administration said.

The project will be located 12 nautical miles from both Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Nantucket, Mass., and is expected to be completed in 2023.

“A clean energy future is within our grasp in the United States. The approval of this project is an important step toward advancing the Administration’s  goals to create good paying union jobs while combating climate change and powering our nation,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

The Vineyard Wind project had faced setbacks during the Trump administration. In December, it said it wanted to halt its goal of getting a federal permit and was later told by the Trump administration that it would need to start all over again.

Read the full story at The Hill

For Vineyard Wind 1, one last hurdle

May 10, 2021 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is close to issuing a record of decision for Vineyard Wind 1. This is the last major step before work on the 62-turbine offshore wind farm project commences. In a statement to The Times, BOEM wrote that a review through the lens of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) is the only thing left before the record of decision can be issued.

“Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) requires federal agencies to consider the effects on historic properties of projects they carry out, assist, fund, permit, license, or approve throughout the country,” the agency stated. “If a federal or federally assisted project has the potential to affect historic properties, a Section 106 review will take place. In this case, the federal undertaking is to approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove the Construction and Operations Plan submitted by Vineyard Wind, LLC, for a wind energy development project southwest of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.”

Among the things beneath the ocean that must be considered in the Section 106 review are shipwrecks and Native American archeological sites.

Read the full story at MV Times

NMFS reports right whales increasing use of New England offshore wind areas

May 7, 2021 — Endangered northern right whales that have been arriving earlier in spring and staying longer around Cape Cod have also expanded their presence south and west of Nantucket Shoals, into areas planned for large-scale development of offshore wind power, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Scientists from the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center conducting surveillance flights spotted 57 fight whales March 30 off southeast New England, in and around wind energy areas that have been leased to developers by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

NMFS officials said those whales included three mother-calf pairs – results from what experts have called the most successful calving season in years for the highly endangered species, with 17 young reported and nine mother-calf pairs sighted in Northeast waters in recent weeks. The entire population was last estimated to number around 366 animals.

Right whales typically appear in Cape Cod Bay during the spring, but in recent years they have been showing up sooner and lingering longer, according to a summary released April 15 by NMFS.

A small portion of the whale population, mostly pregnant females, migrates to waters off Georgia and northern Florida for the winter calving season, according to marine mammal researcher Tim Cole who leads the NEFSC whale survey team.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Massachusetts waters remain closed to lobstermen

May 6, 2021 — The state Division of Marine Fisheries is reminding lobstermen and other trap fishermen that state waters north and east of Cape Cod remain closed to all commercial harvesting because of the continued presence of North Atlantic right whales.

DMF and the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies continue to fly aerial survey flights to gauge the scale of right whale presence in state waters as the imperiled stock continues its northward feeding migration.

The agency said its most recent flight, on April 28, 2021, observed 86 right whales in the waters of northern Cape Cod Bay, southern Massachusetts Bay, and Stellwagen Bank, a fishing ground located about 15 miles southeast of Gloucester to about six miles north of Provincetown.

“Additional surveillance flights are anticipated to occur over the next several days,” DMF stated. “DMF will reevaluate the status of this closure based on the presence or absence of whales. Should observational data demonstrate right whales have migrated out of Massachusetts waters, DMF may lift the trap gear closure prior to May 15.”

Also, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Slocum underwater glider on Sunday acoustically detected the presence of North Atlantic right whales north of Cape Cod and NOAA Fisheries on Monday instituted a voluntary right whale slow zone north of Cape Cod until May 17.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times