Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: In New Bedford, Healey celebrates completion of Vineyard Wind project as the company faces financial disputes

June 26, 2026 — Vineyard Wind 1 the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project located off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, is finally up and running after years of starts and stops — just not at full capacity.

Gov. Maura Healey along with Massachusetts labor and energy leaders celebrated on Wednesday the completion of the project — which concluded construction in March — in New Bedford, touting its benefits while shrugging off the wind development company’s recent financial disputes that have made headlines and threatened the project.

New Bedford’s Marine Commerce Terminal served as the main gathering point for materials that were transported to the site of Vineyard Wind 1, including turbine components that were prepared for installation. The terminal will continue to serve as Vineyard Wind’s site of operations and maintenance. Over 1,500 union members worked under a project labor agreement out of the terminal.

The $4.5 billion project has supported nearly 4,000 jobs since it began, and operations and maintenance are expected to sustain between 80 and 100 jobs per year moving forward. Vineyard Wind will save Massachusetts families and businesses an estimated $1.4 billion on their electricity bills and will generate enough clean, affordable energy to power over 400,000 homes and businesses in New England, Healey said. The project will reduce carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year, according to Vineyard Wind’s website.

Read the full story at the CommonWealth Beacon

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Scallop Boss Takes His Fight To Trump Over Georges Bank Access

June 23, 2026 — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell on June 22, 2026, rolled out final consumer-protection regulations for assisted living residences, targeting misleading fees, murky billing and shaky eviction practices. The rules cap a multi-year public process that AG staff say is designed to give residents clearer service agreements and formal channels to complain when things go sideways. The regulations are scheduled to kick in when they are published in the Massachusetts Register on July 17, 2026.

In a press release on Mass.gov, Campbell said, “I am proud to announce the AGO’s first‑ever regulations for assisted living residences, which will strengthen accountability and protect older adults from unfair and deceptive practices under the state’s consumer protection law.” The Attorney General’s Elder Justice Unit led the project, with Assistant Attorney General Andrew Musgrave at the helm alongside Director Mary Freeley and Deputy Director Valerie Frias. The release also names Allie Zuliani as the deputy press secretary and media contact for the rollout.

Read the full article at Hoodline

MASSACHUSETTS: Codfather’s polarizing legacy debated at Whaling Museum talk

June 17, 2026 — To one man, he’s a crook. To another, he’s Robin Hood. He wasn’t in the room, but he was the center of attention.

His name is Carlos Rafael. You might know him as The Codfather.

Three fishing experts and a podcaster drew a crowd of more than 140 to the Whaling Museum on Monday night for “Catching The Codfather,” a live panel discussion about the GBH podcast by the same name. GBH hosted the event in partnership with The Light.

“Catching The Codfather,” delved into the rise and fall of the infamous fishing magnate and what his story reveals about New Bedford’s fishing industry. In 2017, Rafael was convicted of tax evasion and fish mislabeling, among other charges, for a scheme designed to get around fishing quotas. He was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison and required to sell his $100 million fleet.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: It Was Supposed to Be a Lifeline for a Blue-Collar Town. Then Trump Returned.

June 1, 2026 — The dock that launched U.S. offshore wind is mostly empty now. The 200-foot-tall tower pieces that loomed like skyscrapers over a harbor of fishing trawlers are gone. So too are the house-sized gearboxes and turbine blades stretching the length of a soccer field.

The big turbine parts were supposed to represent a new era in a city where fish houses and abandoned factories line the waterfront. They were assembled here, sent out to sea and installed as part of Vineyard Wind, the largest renewable energy project built to-date east of the Mississippi River. All that was left on a recent April day were empty blade racks, a pair of red cranes and three broken blades.

It wasn’t supposed to look like this.

Vineyard Wind was supposed to be the first of many. Instead, it may be the only offshore wind project ever built in New Bedford.

This city of Portuguese, Latino and Cape Verdean residents is ground zero for America’s offshore wind industry, a test case of whether a blue collar fishing town can forge a new economic future by raising massive turbines out at sea.

Read the full article at Politico

MASSACHUSETTS: After A Hard Winter, Blessing Of The Fleet A Welcome Event

May 27, 2026 — It was a tough winter for the New England commercial fishing industry.

The Lily Jean out of Gloucester and the New Bedford-based Yankee Rose both sank with all hands. The impact was felt far behind the vessels’ home ports.

The local nonprofit Women of Fishing Families (WOFF) sent grocery and gas cards as well as care packages to the families of the fishermen who lost their lives.

“They had a lot of people depending on them,” said WOFF founding president Karen Murdoch. “We were lucky to be able to help these families because it affected fishing communities up and down the coast.”

WOFF will bring the town’s commercial fishing fleet together Sunday, May 31 for the annual Blessing of the Fleet to both acknowledge the winter’s difficulties and set the stage for a safe and successful fishing season.

Read the full article at The Cape Cod Chronicle 

MASSACHUSETTS: As harbor cleanup winds down, education around toxic seafood continues

May 22, 2026 — Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed the large-scale cleanup of New Bedford Harbor, removing dangerous chemicals called PCBs from the surface water and siloing the remaining toxic sediment in underground cells.

In an annual update on the cleanup Wednesday night, EPA remedial project manager Chris Kelly announced that today, PCB levels in both the Inner and Outer Harbor remain low, posing no threat to swimmers, kayakers, or beachgoers.

Just don’t eat the fish.

Despite ongoing education around the health risks of eating fish and shellfish caught in New Bedford Harbor, a recent survey conducted by the Community Economic Development Center found that over three-quarters of surveyed residents reported eating contaminated seafood caught in the harbor last year. More than half reported eating contaminated seafood at least once a month.

The EPA survey results didn’t come as a surprise since the majority of the 149 respondents said this was their first time taking the survey, said Aaron Sheehan, EPA community involvement coordinator.

“It’s all to say that there’s more education for us to do,” Sheehan said.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Port cities try to weather shifting winds

May 21, 2026 — Forty-Two Acres of vacant industrial land — a patchwork of asphalt, weeds, and grass — sit waiting in Salem’s harbor. In the center is a coal power plant, shut down in 2014 after a decade of community activism, and a natural gas plant, retired in 2018. The city identified the lot, roughly 30 football fields in size, to be the site for Salem’s offshore wind terminal, which would be the third in the state after the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal opened in 2015 and the city began its phased opening of the Foss Marine Terminal in 2023.

But strong political winds have, at least for now, changed the course for Salem.

For the city’s climate advocates, the prospective terminal represents decades of work toward a cleaner, renewable energy future, one that the state has been putting money and policy behind for years and that has promised to bring thousands of jobs and other community investments. Salem and New Bedford both received millions from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) to develop the sites of retired fossil fuel power plants into terminals that would serve as logistics and operations centers for the construction of offshore wind. But wind projects have long been struggling to get off the ground. During the Biden administration, global supply chain disruption, climbing inflation, and high interest rates drove up costs for developers. The Trump administration’s anti-wind actions — issuing executive orders that block new projects, pausing existing leases, and rescinding grants — drove both cities further from the economic boon they expected.

In New Bedford, the influx of tenants that was hoped for never materialized. In Salem, the plan was to build two berths to receive ships carrying crew and materials for wind projects. But construction is stalled and there’s no start date in sight.

“We expected a lot of jobs, like a lot of life-changing … career sustainable jobs that were going to come from this, and that’s what hasn’t materialized,” said Sam Lambert, deputy chapter director for the Sierra Club’s Massachusetts’ chapter, of the Salem terminal and the offshore wind projects it might have supported.

In New Bedford, the terminal has had to shift its vision. It’s leaning on general cargo and marine construction for additional revenue.

“We were operating under a plan where, when the first [wind farm] gets first electricity, it would start doing its operation and maintenance work out of our facility,” said Andrew Saunders, president of the New Bedford Foss Marine Terminal. But with the current political climate, “the terminal has had to pivot in order to generate revenue, and figure out something of a different identity.”

Read the full article at Commonwealth Beacon

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fishing industry sees impact of rising fuel costs

May 18, 2026 –At Sea Fuels Marine, located at 101 Co Op Wharf in New Bedford, General Manager Paul Anthony said he hasn’t witnessed such a rise in the cost of diesel fuel in a long time.

It seems like every time it’s brought up in the news, the fuel price jumps, he said.

“Who knows how long it will take to level out. I honestly don’t know. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve never seen it like this, and there have been times there were spikes including during the Gulf War, the pandemic and the Ukraine war with Russia,” he said.

According to AAA, as of May 17 the price of diesel fuel is at $5.79 per gallon. A year ago, it was $3.76 per gallon.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford exhibit explores fishing’s complex history

May 14, 2026 — A new exhibit exploring the complex history of federal fisheries management is scheduled to open May 14 at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center.

Titled “In History’s Wake,” the exhibit examines the legacy of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, according to a community announcement. The law established the 200-mile limit that pushed out foreign factory ships and laid the groundwork for much of the governance and oversight that manages the commercial fishing industry today.

The exhibit will be on display through spring 2027.

The exhibit goes beyond a look at the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s legislative history, examining the evolution of the industry and the often-challenging relationship between commercial fishermen, the state and federal government, environmentalists, and scientists, according to the announcement.

Read the full article at AOL

MASSACHUSETTS: Oil and water: Inside the ‘mystery’ oil spills casting a sheen on New Bedford Harbor

March 30, 2026 —  Anyone walking down New Bedford’s Pier 3 can see the state of the commercial scalloping fleet, rusty trawlers and all. Less obvious are the subtle sheens of “mystery” oil spills leaking into the harbor’s waters.

Trace amounts of diesel and other fossil fuels — especially in older boats — can leak into the vessel’s bilge water and spill into the ocean, where their origins are nearly impossible to trace. These spills can impact water quality and get stuck in the harbor sediment.

At one point, Buzzards Bay Coalition estimated that these so-called “mystery” spills occur in the harbor once every eight days. Coalition President Mark Rasmussen believes that number is likely higher.

“Those are just the spills that are reported,” Rasmussen said. “It’s considered commonplace in a lot of spots of the harbor here to see oil in a way that just doesn’t happen in other places.”

These spills average between 5 and 20 gallons of oil per spill, Rasmussen added.

Although harbor workers and local officials are required by law to report oil spills or visible sheens to the U.S. Coast Guard, these smaller spills often go undetected, Rasmussen said, either dispersing on their own or sinking into the sediment on the harbor floor.

These spills are particularly common among the aging scallop fleet. Many scallop boats are between 30 and 50 years old, making it one of the oldest fleets in the U.S., behind Pacific salmon trolling boats.

The problem is worse in New Bedford than in other ports, in part because it doesn’t have a facility to pump oily bilge out of boats.

The oil pollution also brings up long-term questions: how can New Bedford’s fishing fleet adapt to use less diesel fuel? And someday, could the fishing fleet even go electric?

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light