Saving Seafood

Nantucket wind lawsuit on hold as feds take 2nd look at SouthCoast permit

September 8, 2025 — In a move that could reshape the future of SouthCoast Wind — and signal deeper uncertainty for offshore wind — the U.S. Department of the Interior is reviewing its approval of the planned offshore wind farm off Nantucket. At the same time, federal attorneys want to pause the town of Nantucket’s related lawsuit while regulators revisit the permit — a shift Nantucket supports.

On Aug. 29, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. District Court for a temporary hold on Nantucket’s appeal filed over the permit. In a Sept. 2 statement, town leaders said they hope the pause leads to broader changes in how offshore wind projects are approved.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Feds target fully permitted New England Wind project

September 4, 2025 —  The Trump administration ratcheted up its targeting of the offshore wind industry on Wednesday, stating its intent to revoke a key approval for the fully permitted New England Wind 1 project, which plans to use New Bedford for long-term operations.

In the document, filed as part of a lawsuit brought by ACK for Whales against the Avangrid project, the federal government said it is “intending to move no later than October 10 to remand and, separately, to vacate” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the construction and operations plan, a permit granted to the project in mid-2024.

Without the permit, the project cannot be built. Separately, the project has been in the process of securing a power purchase agreement with the state, another necessity for project buildout. The agreement has been delayed several times due to the Trump administration’s freeze on offshore wind permitting and the uncertainty it has created.

New England Wind 1 plans to construct the project out of Salem (a terminal yet to be built that last week lost $34 million in federal funding), but house its long-term operations and maintenance hub in New Bedford. Contingent on the project moving forward, the Danish company, Liftra, also plans to establish a crane manufacturing facility in the city.

New England Wind 1’s lease area is located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The project’s first phase plans to install up to 800 megawatts of energy.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

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

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

Offshore wind plans caught in federal headwinds, but sites east of Cape Cod unaffected

August 7, 2025 — State and local officials and regional advocacy groups are split over the federal government’s decision to back off on offshore wind projects, a shift that casts uncertainty over new projects nationwide but doesn’t affect leases east and south of Cape Cod.

State Rep. Steven Xiarhos, R-West Barnstable, welcomes the changes as “a necessary course correction.”

“It reflects what many of us on Cape Cod and across the commonwealth have been saying for some time: the rush to industrialize our oceans has gone too far, too fast, and without enough science, transparency, or respect for local communities,” he said.

He added that the action “gives us a critical opportunity to pause, reassess, and get this right.”

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket Officials Blast Vineyard Wind, Deliver List Of Demands

August 4, 2025 — Nantucket officials called Vineyard Wind on the carpet Tuesday, claiming the offshore wind developer had failed to live up to its agreements with the town, and telling the company to “lead or leave.”

In a press conference Tuesday morning held on Zoom, the Nantucket Select Board made 15 demands of Vineyard Wind, setting a two-week deadline for the offshore wind company to reply. If no reply is forthcoming, or if the Select Board deems Vineyard Wind’s responses inadequate, the town is leaving all of its options open -including legal action.

The statements by town officials marked the strongest rebuke yet of Vineyard Wind since the July 2024 blade failure that littered Nantucket’s beaches with fiberglass and foam debris, and prompted federal authorities to shut down the project for nearly six months.

“This is not the first time that Vineyard Wind has seen many of these demands, so we expect two weeks is plenty of time for them to confirm their agreement, or to explain publicly why they should not be held accountable in these basic ways,” said Select Board member Brooke Mohr, who was the board’s chair during the July 2024 blade failure.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket Demands Accountability from Vineyard Wind After “Broken Promises” and Safety Failures

July 30, 2025 — Nantucket delivered a blistering rebuke to Vineyard Wind on Tuesday, accusing the offshore wind developer of a pattern of deception, negligence, and disregard for the island community it promised to protect.

At a press conference, town officials outlined 15 sweeping accountability demands after what they called Vineyard Wind’s “empty pledges and unfulfilled commitments.” Officials said the company has failed on every major front — from basic safety measures to transparent communication — leaving the island vulnerable and eroding public trust.

“Vineyard Wind has left Nantucket, its residents, and its visitors with empty pledges and unfulfilled commitments. We are done waiting for them to do the right thing,” said Select Board member and former chair Brooke Mohr. “We call on Vineyard Wind’s owners, investors, federal regulators, and our elected leaders to stand with us in holding the company to its word.”

The scathing list of failures includes the company’s refusal to communicate critical safety information, its inability to activate light pollution controls in a timely manner, and its failure to create any meaningful emergency response plans despite last year’s high-profile turbine blade failure

Read the full article at The Newport Buzz

MASSACHUSETTS: One Year Later, Vineyard Wind Blade Failure Still Unfolding

July 16, 2025 — One year ago today, Nantucket residents awoke to reports that green debris was littering the south shore beaches from Madaket out to Tom Nevers. It quickly became clear that the thousands of pieces of fiberglass and foam had floated to the island from the Vineyard Wind farm 15 miles to the southwest following a blade failure.

After failing to notify the town about the incident for 48 hours, Vineyard Wind finally acknowledged the situation following the initial reports of debris washing up and dispatched a team to the island to begin the assessment and cleanup. But in those first few hours, it was the island’s lifeguards – some of them just teenagers – who collected the largest and most dangerous pieces of debris from the surf. Despite warnings not to, residents took it upon themselves to gather and dispose of the blade pieces.

The incident rapidly became a regional and then national news story as the town announced that all of Nantucket’s south shore beaches were closed to swimmers “due to large floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards.”

Within hours, the federal government agency responsible for monitoring the Vineyard Wind project – the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – shut down the multi-billion-dollar project. The story of Vineyard Wind’s blade failure and the revelations that followed – including manufacturing deviations and allegations of a safety data falsification scheme at a wind turbine blade plant in Canada – would become the biggest news story of the past year.

Twelve months later, while some parts of the story have concluded, others are still unfolding and remain unresolved.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

MASSACHUSETTS: GE Vernova, Nantucket reach settlement on Vineyard Wind accident

July 15, 2025 — Nantucket and GE Vernova announced Friday they had reached a $10.5 million settlement to compensate the Massachusetts town for a blade break at Vineyard Wind last summer.

A blade detached from one of the project’s 62 turbines on July 13, 2024, crashing into the ocean and sending a plume of fiberglass debris into the water.

The accident, which was later attributed to faulty quality control at a GE Vernova factory in Quebec, was a black eye for the offshore wind industry and delayed construction of what had been heralded as the country’s first major offshore wind project.

Read the full article at E&E News