Saving Seafood

MASSCHUSETTS: A way of life on the wane: Nantucket’s scallop fleet faces uncertain future

June 11, 2026 — Nantucket’s commercial scalloping industry has become a shell of its former self.

Fewer commercial scallopers, especially younger ones, are combing eelgrass beds each winter for Nantucket bay scallops, arguably New England’s most coveted shellfish.

The harbor’s adult scallop population has been on the rise in recent years, but the number of people willing to spend a morning on the water in wintery conditions has, for the most part, been steadily decreasing.

Close to 20,000 bushels were hauled out of Nantucket and Madaket harbors in 2012, one of the highest-yield seasons in recent memory, according to town shellfish and aquatic resource manager Tara Riley. In the 1980s, it was not unusual for the harvest to exceed 70,000 bushels.

This past commercial season, which wrapped up at the end of March, about 7,800 bushels were harvested. The season before 2024-2025, was the first time more than 10,000 bushels had been caught in nearly a decade.

Read the full article at The Inquirer and Mirror

MASSACHUSETTS: The Last Scallopers?

May 26, 2026 — As the sun rises on a crisp early fall morning on Nantucket, many islanders are still sound asleep in their beds, but scallopers are already waist-deep in the harbor, dragging their dredges across the harbor floor in hopes of a first good haul. The harbor is still, the air sharp with salt, and the faint diesel hum of working boats carries across the water. For Captain Bob DeCosta, the quiet ritual is more than a livelihood. It’s a family tradition that has spanned three generations. His father taught him how to fish in the ’70s, just as DeCosta now takes his own son out on the water.

“I can’t imagine not scalloping,” said DeCosta, who operates a charter fishing boat in the summer. “I enjoy getting up early in the morning, being on the water, watching the sun rise and the tranquility that comes with it. After a full summer charter, it’s very peaceful. It’s almost like I’m not even really working.”

But the fishery DeCosta inherited doesn’t look like the one his father knew. Two decades ago, 250 fishermen worked on a fleet of 100 boats. Today, the fleet has shrunk to 50-70 fishermen on 25-30 boats. It’s an expensive job with low returns: Rigging a boat is costly, while wholesale scallop prices remain stagnant at $12 to $14 a pound. “The winter scallop fishery is the last real struggle for commercial fishing on Nantucket,” DeCosta said. “We don’t have the market we used to have. It’s become more of a niche item, a specialty item than a more robust market.”

Scalloping is one of the island’s last ties to its working waterfront. Whaling has long vanished, but scalloping preserves a piece of the island’s maritime culture. “Once scalloping is gone, we’ll just be known as a destination for tourists. It won’t be known as a water-related community anymore,” DeCosta said. Nantucket’s bay scalloping industry is one of the last of its kind. Similar fisheries on Martha’s Vineyard and Long Island have dwindled to nearly nothing.

Read the full article at N Magazine

Enormous blue whales spotted in “unusual occurrence” off Massachusetts coast

March 6, 2026 — Blue whales, the largest animals on Earth, have been spotted not far off the coast of Massachusetts in what the New England Aquarium is calling an “unusual occurrence.”

Researchers with the aquarium spotted two blue whales just 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday during an aerial survey. The day before, they saw a blue whale at Lydonia Canyon, 170 miles away to the southeast of Nantucket.

The aquarium team has never encountered a blue whale in the southern New England survey area before. The most recent sighting of the endangered species in the area had been off the coast of Maine in 2023. A blue whale was also spotted off Cape Cod, 13 miles east of Truro, by the Center for Coastal Studies in 2020.

Read the full article at CBS News

Legal tug-of-war over wind energy in Mass. continues with Trump admin challenge

February 19, 2026 — Lawyers for the Trump administration are challenging — in a Massachusetts court — a federal judge’s December ruling that struck down a freeze on all permitting for wind energy projects nationwide.

Issued in January 2025, the original presidential order temporarily halted all federal permitting while agencies reviewed wind energy leasing and permitting practices, according to court documents.

The December ruling overturning the order came after a coalition of 17 states — including Massachusetts — successfully argued that the administration’s permit pause violated federal law. U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris ruled that the policy was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Read the full article at the Cape Cod Times

Vineyard Wind to argue in federal court for getting back to work ASAP

January 27, 2026 — The developer behind a large offshore wind farm near Massachusetts will try to convince a federal judge on Tuesday to allow construction on the project to resume.

Attorneys for the company, Vineyard Wind, will ask the judge to hit pause on a federal order that stopped work on the nearly complete project. The Trump administration suspended work on Vineyard Wind and four other offshore wind projects last month, citing unspecified national security concerns.

In a subsequent lawsuit, Vineyard Wind accused the government of acting unlawfully and of abusing its statutory power  — a move the company said is costing it $2 million for each day that construction is shut down.

Tuesday’s hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston comes amid mounting public outrage over the region’s high energy costs, and concerns about how New England will handle the projected growth in electricity demand over the next decade. The hearing also comes after judges allowed construction to resume — at least temporarily — on three other East Coast offshore wind projects that were similarly shut down by last month’s federal order.

Given the outcome of those cases, Timothy Fox, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm that tracks offshore wind projects, said Vineyard Wind stands a good shot at getting its temporary restraining order, too.

Read the full article at wbur

Lawsuit Filings Reveal New Information On Status Of Vineyard Wind Project

January 26, 2026 —  According to several Vineyard Wind executives, if the offshore wind farm isn’t allowed to resume construction, its unfinished turbines could pose a serious health and safety risk.

The turbines that pose the most risk are the so-called “hammerheads,” or turbines that are partially built but have not yet had blades attached. In multiple documents filed as part of its lawsuit seeking a temporary injunction against the federal government’s stop-work order, Vineyard Wind claims that if the company can’t attach the blades soon, they are at risk of catching fire, dumping debris into the ocean, or injuring Vineyard Wind employees.

For some Nantucket residents, this warning may carry uncomfortable echoes of the blade collapse that occurred at Vineyard Wind in August of 2024, sending tons of debris to Nantucket’s shores.

“The risks and impacts associated with hammerheads offshore are as follows: lightning strike, climate control in the Nacelle [head], and structural fatigue,” wind turbine team lead Steven Simkins wrote. “In the event of a [lightning] strike, there is a risk of the electrically powered and charged components in the hub igniting. Any electrical fire has the potential to propagate into the nacelle and cause a larger fire event.”

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

Nantucket nonprofit, businesses file lawsuit, alleging offshore wind is crushing their operations

January 20, 2026 — A nonprofit opposed to offshore wind development, a lobster fisherman, and a whale-watching business are suing the federal government, arguing it violated federal law when it approved the construction of Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine project 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket.

Dan Pronk, a Nantucket lobsterman, does commercial lobstering in the area of the turbines. He told Just the News that the project has decimated his business.

Revolution gets greenlighted 

The Trump administration last month paused offshore wind leases due to concerns about the impact of the project on radar, a national-security issue. Multiple reports from various federal agencies over the past few years have found that the clutter from offshore wind blades and turbines causes interference to radar. This lowers the ability of radar to identify targets on the water, and it creates false targets around the projects.

The lawsuit filed this week by Nantuck-based ACK4Whales and two local businesses argues that when the Department of Interior and other agencies under former President Joe Biden approved the Vineyard Wind project, they ignored the impacts radar disruptions would have on civil aviation and national defense.

In so doing, the lawsuit argues, the Biden-Harris administration violated the Offshore Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Read the full article at Just The News

Nantucket Group, Island Fishermen Sue Federal Government To Vacate Vineyard Wind Approvals

January 13, 2026 — Already suspended by the federal government over national security concerns, Vineyard Wind is now facing another challenge: a federal lawsuit filed by the Nantucket-based offshore wind opposition group ACK For Whales and two island fishermen seeking to vacate its permits.

The non-profit activist group has been joined by Martha’s Vineyard fisherman and Wampanoag tribe member William Vanderhoop and Nantucket lobsterman Dan Pronk in the legal challenge. They claim the federal government violated the Offshore Continental Shelf Land Act (OCSLA) and the Administrative Procedures Act when it approved Vineyard Wind under the Biden administration.

The lawsuit, filed last Friday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks orders vacating Vineyard Wind’s record of decision and its construction and operations plan, claiming the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Department of the Interior ignored “the disruptive effects the turbines have on civil aviation and national defenses, imperiling safety.”

“They were in such a rush to achieve their political goals, they didn’t care what corners they cut, the threat to our national defense or personal flying safety, or how high our electric bills would go,” said Nantucket resident and ACK For Whales president Vallorie Oliver in a statement. “This was politics at its worst.”

The group’s lawsuit also alleges that BOEM is violating the law by allowing Vineyard Wind to continue to operate.

“BOEM is engaging in ongoing violations of OCSLA because it continues to allow Vineyard Wind 1 project to operate under approvals that were issued using an interpretation of OCSLA…that the Office of the Solicitor has since withdrawn as erroneous,” the lawsuit states.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

MASSACHUSSETS: Nantucket reaches deal on Vineyard Wind transparency, response

December 16, 2025 — After months of pressure from local leaders, Nantucket has won new guarantees from Vineyard Wind, securing an agreement that sets clearer rules for communication, public transparency, and emergency response as the offshore wind project progresses toward full operations.

The agreement was formally announced on Dec. 11.

Town leaders first raised the issue publicly in July, when they called for more consistent and transparent information about the project’s daily activities and a more reliable process for handling emergencies at sea. They said the town had struggled to get quick, detailed answers, and they wanted a system that let both officials and residents track what the project was doing.

Select Board member Brooke Mohr, who led the island delegation in the talks, said the push centered on protecting the island’s natural and economic landscape.

Many issues arose in the aftermath of the catastrophic failure of a blade on turbine AW-38 in July 2024, which sent tons of debris crashing into the ocean and then washing up on Nantucket’s south shore and elsewhere throughout the region. Others are related to the light pollution from the turbine field.

“Transparency and predictability are essential to protect our world-renowned coastline, fisheries, night skies, and heritage tourism economy,” she said.

Nantucket is listed as a national historic landmark.

The company is constructing its 62-turbine, 800- megawatt Vineyard Wind 1 project — a joint venture of Avangrid Renewables LLC and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — in waters starting about 15 miles southwest of Nantucket. The company earlier this month reported the project is progressing and has a current operational capacity of more than 400 megawatts.

Read the full article at Dredge Wire

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket, Vineyard Wind agree to new transparency and emergency response measures

December 12, 2025 — More than a year after a wind turbine off the coast of Nantucket malfunctioned, causing debris to wash ashore, the town and Vineyard Wind have struck a new agreement to improve transparency.

On Thursday, Nantucket officials announced they secured a series of commitments from the wind project coordinators to improve information sharing, communications, along with emergency planning and response.

Read the full article at WCVB