September 23, 2025 — A judge on Monday temporarily lifted the Trump administration’s order to halt construction of Revolution Wind, a massive offshore wind energy project that would power hundreds of thousands of homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Trump administration seeks to revoke SouthCoast Wind approval
September 23, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to revoke federal approval for the SouthCoast Wind project off Massachusetts. Striking at the planned array of 141 turbines is the latest move by the Trump administration to stamp out surviving renewable energy projects approved during the Biden presidency.
The project with a planned 2.4 gigawatt nameplate rating took four years to complete the permitting process and “could now arbitrarily lose approval for its construction and operations plan,” advocates with the BlueGreen Alliance said. “This is the last major federal permit wind projects need before putting turbines into the water and was awarded to SouthCoast Wind after years of careful review.”
The Sept. 18 court maneuver targeting SouthCoast Wind came on the heels of the Trump administration seeking to revoke permits for the US Wind project off Ocean City, Md. SouthCoast was one of the last acts in the Biden administration’s push to move offshore wind projects forward. Its final permit was issued Jan. 17, three days before Trump’s inauguration and his directive that same day to suspended further action on wind power projects.
Judge Says Work on Wind Farm Off Rhode Island Can Proceed, for Now
September 22, 2025 — A federal judge ruled on Monday that the Danish energy company Orsted could restart work on Revolution Wind, a large wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that is nearly complete but had been abruptly halted last month by the Trump administration.
Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit that the developers of Revolution Wind had filed challenging the Interior Department’s stop-work order. The injunction means that construction can continue while the case moves forward.
“Revolution Wind will resume impacted construction work as soon as possible, with safety as the top priority,” Orsted, which is developing the wind farm in a joint venture with Skyborn Renewables, said in a statement. Orsted added that it would “continue to seek to work collaboratively with the U.S. administration and other stakeholders toward a prompt resolution” of the lawsuit.
The $6.2 billion Revolution Wind project was 80 percent completed when the Interior Department ordered construction to stop on Aug. 29. The developers behind the 65-turbine project had said it was on track to generate enough electricity for more than 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut by next spring.
New England scientists honing models that predict where right whales will pop up next
September 22, 2025 — In recent years, efforts to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale population have included making ships slow down in known whale zones to avoid hitting them and encouraging fishing crews to use ropeless gear to prevent them from becoming entangled.
But changes to where the whales congregate have been challenging some of those efforts.
Now scientists at the University of Maine and the New England Aquarium in Boston are working together to improve their modelling to predict where the whales will be at any given time.
“North Atlantic right whales utilize a lot of the ocean environment, and so it’s really hard for humans to be out there observing them at all times,” Camille Ross, an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said in a radio interview with CBC New Brunswick’s Shift.
“And so models like this are really important to fill in those data gaps when we don’t have eyes on the water.”
Ross is the lead author of the study, called “Incorporating prey fields into North Atlantic right whale density surface models,” which was published in the latest edition of the research journal Endangered Species Research.
BOEM Tells Court it Wants to Resume Review of Permits for SouthCoast Wind
September 22, 2025 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management formally filed with a federal court on Thursday, September 18, calling for the court to set aside the actions of the Biden administration so that it can restart the environmental review on a Massachusetts offshore wind farm project as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing review of the industry.
The Department of Justice made the filing to the federal court as part of a legal action brought in March 2025 by Nantucket, which was challenging the approval of the Construction and Operation Plan for the proposed 2.4 GW SoutCoast Wind. The Department of the Interior and its BOEM are parties to the suit. They have asked that the case be postponed and the permits, which were granted on January 17, just days before the end of the Biden presidency, undergo further review.
The project, which was approved for up to 141 wind turbines and up to five offshore substation platforms, would be located 20 miles south of Nantucket and approximately 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. It is being developed by Ocean Winds, which is a joint venture between EDP Renewables and Engie. They won the lease for the project originally known as Mayflower Wind at the end of 2018, and the company points out that it spent four years in the review and approval process before the Department of the Interior issued its Record of Decision on December 20.
NOAA Fisheries Partners with Northeast Groundfish Industry to Update Key Data for Stock Assessments
September 22, 2025 — The commercial groundfishing industry has long been a cornerstone of New England’s coastal communities. For generations, fishermen have harvested species including Atlantic cod, haddock, and flounder, contributing significantly to local livelihoods and the food supply. NOAA Fisheries works to promote science-based management of these species, ensuring both the industry’s economic viability and the long-term health of marine ecosystems.
Why Weight Matters: Bridging the Gap for Accurate Assessments
Commercial fishery quotas and recorded catch are typically based on total fish weight, which is easy to measure in bulk. However, scientists use stock assessment models that require numbers of individual fish to accurately evaluate population trends and dynamics. To bridge the gap between total weight and number of fish, reported commercial catch weights must be translated into fish numbers using length-weight relationships and conversion factors derived from biological sampling data.
The length-weight relationship—a mathematical model to predict a fish’s weight based on its length—is a fundamental tool in fisheries science. Converting length to weight is more complex for species like Atlantic cod, which are typically gutted at sea. A critical step involves converting the fish’s dressed weight back to whole, or live, weight. This conversion is achieved by applying a ‘conversion factor’, which represents the ratio of the gutted weight to the whole weight.
“Conversion factors directly impact our estimates of commercial landings,” said Charles Perretti, a stock assessment analyst with NOAA Fisheries’ Population Dynamics Branch. “So getting those factors right is important. “Many of the existing conversion factors and length-weight relationships used for Northeast species are based on older data, some dating back to the 1960s. Over time, fish growth rates and body shape can change. Fishing practices also evolve along with technology and shifting market preferences. Stock assessment models benefit from up-to-date inputs including conversion factors and length-weight relationships.
Trump administration moves to revoke permit for Massachusetts offshore wind project
September 22, 2025 — The Trump administration has moved to block a Massachusetts offshore wind farm, its latest effort to hobble an industry and technology that President Donald Trump has attacked as “ugly” and unreliable compared to fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, filed a motion in federal court Thursday seeking to take back its approval of the SouthCoast Wind project’s “construction and operations plan.’’ The plan is the last major federal permit the project needs before it can start putting turbines in the water.
SouthCoast Wind, to be built in federal waters about 23 miles south of Nantucket, is expected to construct as many as 141 turbines to power about 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The Interior Department action is the latest by the Trump administration in what critics call an “all-out assault” on the wind energy industry.
The Feds Had Questions. Court Filings Claim Revolution Wind Developers Didn’t Answer Them
September 17, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s opposition to offshore wind crystallized long before he won re-election. But the justification for the administration’s abrupt halt to the Revolution Wind project on Aug. 22 has remained murky.
Until now.
New court filings from the U.S. Department of Justice reveal the rationale behind the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) decision to shut down the 65-turbine project that was already 80% finished: Developers allegedly failed to turn in required plans on how the project off Rhode Island’s coastline would affect national ocean research and defense work.
“As of the date of this Declaration, still DOI not received any information that these requirements have been satisfied and given how long they remain pending, the department has concerns as to whether they will ever be met,” Adam Suess, acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the Interior Department, wrote in a Sept. 12 affidavit.
Suess’ written testimony counters the criticism from state officials and project developers accusing the Trump administration of arbitrary and unlawful abuses of power in a pair of federal lawsuits filed Sept. 4.
Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, co-developers of the $5 billion wind project, filed their lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and other federal agencies and directors in D.C., while attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut took their legal challenge to Rhode Island federal court. The two southern New England states were under contracts to buy electricity from the 704-megawatt project starting next year. Now in limbo, thousands of labor jobs are on the line, along with both states’ abilities to meet their climate change mandates and the reliability of the regional electric grid.
New England shrimp fishery likely to see continued moratorium
September 17, 2025 — The shrimp fishery off the coast of the northeast U.S. region of New England is likely to face continued shutdowns as the stock continues to struggle.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) first voted to close the shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine in 2013 after the harvest that winter was the smallest since 1978. Despite the closures, the stock has not shown signs of recovery, and the fishery was closed for three more years in 2018, kept closed three years later, and in December 2024, the moratorium was extended further.
MASSACHSUETTS: No more feeling blue- lobster comes to live at UMass Dartmouth
September 16, 2025 — Only about one in two million lobsters are born blue and only 10 to 20 blue lobsters are found a year, including one recently acquired by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology.
Lobsters can have an excess of a protein that causes some blue spots, but almost all lobsters have some red, according to UMass Dartmouth sea-water lab manager Forrest Kennedy. The all blue mutation is caused by the blue protein binding to the red protein.
The lobster was caught by a fisherman on the “Michael and Erin” in Beverly in early to mid June, who called the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries with the condition that the lobster not be eaten. As UMass Dartmouth shares a building with Marine Fisheries, the university is now housing the lobster.
“We can offer him a good home here,” Kennedy.
The lobster is male based on his large claw size and fins. He is estimated to be about seven to nine years old, and weighs 1.25 pounds. Lobsters are estimated to live up to 100 years, so UMass could have him for a long time.
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