Saving Seafood

Feds’ plan aims to help whales and offshore wind farms coexist

January 31, 2024 — In the midst of the critical North Atlantic Right Whale calving season along the East Coast, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled a strategy to navigate the intersection of offshore wind projects and the endangered species’ habitat.

Marine mammal advocates welcomed a final joint federal strategy to save the whales and develop offshore wind where the two might collide. It stresses teamwork, research, strict monitoring and mitigation. That includes also avoiding leasing in areas where major impacts to North Atlantic Right Whales may occur.

“We believe that we can recover North Atlantic Right Whales and support responsibly developed offshore wind,” said Gib Brogan of Oceana. “But it puts a burden on the federal government to make sure that that balance happens.”

Read the full article at NJ Spotlight News

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind foes welcome push to site projects further off NJ coast

January 31, 2024 — One of the more vocal opponents of the state’s offshore wind program is praising last week’s decision to build two wind farms because, at more than 40 miles off the Jersey coast, they will be out of sight.

“We think it is a step in the right direction,’’ said Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island, a group that had gone to court to block the initial offshore wind projects nearer to the coast, referring to the two new projects approved by the state Board of Public Utilities.

Leading Light Wind and Attentive Energy got the go-ahead to build a total of 3,742 megawatts of offshore wind capacity, enough to power 1.8 million homes when the wind turbines become operational in 2030 or 2031.

Read the full article at New Jersey Spotlight News

Feds look to release plan to protect right whales while expanding wind power

January 29, 2024 — With whale deaths and offshore wind power now firmly connected in many minds along the Jersey Shore, federal officials released a strategy to protect one of the most endangered species while developing wind power off the coast.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, under the U.S. Department of the Interior, on Thursday released a final joint strategy aimed at helping the North Atlantic right whale recover while also developing offshore wind energy, citing a Biden administration goal of increasing wind energy development.

The North Atlantic right whale, weighing multiple tons and growing to be more than 50 feet long, is considered to be at the brink of extinction.

According to federal studies, only about 360 of the animals are left in the world, and of those, fewer than 70 are reproductively active females.

Read the full article at the Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: Fish mortalities up in New Jersey waters due to low oxygen levels

January 26, 2024 — Dead fish, lobster, and crab were found in the ocean off the U.S. state of New Jersey in the summer of 2023, and the suspected cause of death was low oxygen and pH levels, according to a report by Rutgers University researchers.

Lower dissolved oxygen levels alone are not uncommon in summer months, as they are a natural part of the seasonal stratification of warmer and cooler waters off the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, but 2023 was notable for both lower than usual oxygen and a drop in pH – the measure of relative acidity in the water – the study found.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: New Jersey approves two giant offshore wind power projects

January 25, 2024 — New Jersey’s utility regulator on Wednesday approved two offshore wind power projects with a combined capacity of 3,742-megawatts (MW) and whose backers include Invenergy and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA).

“Today’s action moves New Jersey closer to achieving Governor Phil Murphy’s goal of reaching 100 percent clean energy by 2035,” the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) said. The board said the two projects would bring about $6.8 billion in economic benefits to the state and provide enough energy to power around 1.8 million homes.

The offshore wind industry is expected to play a major role in helping several states and U.S. President Joe Biden meet goals to decarbonize the power grid and combat climate change.

But progress was slow last year after offshore developers canceled contracts to sell power in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, and threatened to cancel agreements in other states, as soaring inflation, interest rate hikes and supply-chain problems increased project costs.

Read the full article at Reuters

NEW JERSEY: New Jersey OKs two new offshore wind farms that would be farther from shore and beachgoers’ view

January 24, 2024 — Stung by the pullout of the world’s largest offshore wind developer from two projects off the New Jersey coast last fall, state energy regulators on Wednesday approved two new wind farm projects, saying they remain committed to making the state a leader in the nascent industry.

Both the projects chosen by the state Board of Public Utilities would be considerably farther offshore than earlier projects that generated significant opposition from onshore communities, one of whose concerns was that the turbines would be visible on the horizon from the beach.

The board chose projects called Leading Light Wind and Attentive Energy, which together would generate enough electricity to power 1.8 million homes, the board’s president, Christine Guhl-Sadovy said. But in statements announcing their applications last year, the companies gave a combined total of 1.6 million homes, slightly less than the number given by state officials.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Cape May fishermen at center of major U.S. Supreme Court case

January 21, 2024 — The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing what could be one of the most important decisions it makes this term: whether to uphold a 1984 legal precedent known as Chevron, which states that federal courts must defer to regulatory agencies when a law is ambiguous.

But a lawsuit filed by three commercial fishermen at the Jersey Shore could sink Chevron.

Environmentalists fear that would greatly curtail the power of federal regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a broader spectrum of agencies handling public health and safety.

In short, the fishermen are objecting to a regulation that requires them to pay observers to ensure their vessels comply with federal regulation while at sea. Cape May-based commercial fishing operations, run by Bill Bright, Wayne Reichle, and Stefan Axelsson, filed a suit, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which is backed by conservative groups seeking to overturn Chevron.

Read the full article at The Philadelphia Inquirer 

Bureaucrats threatened to sink my fishing business. Supreme Court can keep others afloat.

January 17, 2024 — I’ve spent eight years fighting the federal government to protect my livelihood. I’ve even filed a lawsuit in federal court. Now, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case like mine on Wednesday, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

The stakes are much higher than just protecting fishermen like me. This is a chance to restore representative democracy, real accountability and the constitutional system that protects every American’s liberty.

This case is about family-owned herring fishing companies in New Jersey. They’ve been forced by unelected federal bureaucrats to pay for monitors who ride on their boats and look out for illegal fishing activities. Following the law is a good thing, but the government should pay for its own monitors. Federal law never required the fishermen to cover this cost, and they can’t afford the $700 to $900 daily fee. It’s going to run them out of business.

Read the full article at USA Today

Supreme Court hears fishermen’s challenge that could upend agency powers

January 18, 2024 — Arguing on behalf of commercial fishermen from New Jersey and Rhode Island, lawyers with conservative legal activist groups made their case before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday for reversing a 40-year precedent, and sharply cutting back the regulatory powers of federal agencies.

During a three and a half-hour hearing, the court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical of the government’s arguments in two related cases – dubbed Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright v. Department of Commerce – brought on behalf of herring fishermen in Rhode Island and Cape May, N.J.

The fishermen challenged a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that required them to carry onboard observers to monitor fishing, and pay costs for the observers contracted by NMFS, at up to $700 a day.

The cases hinge on the so-called “Chevron deference,” a landmark ruling in federal administrative law dating back to a 1984 dispute between the oil giant and environmental activists of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In that Supreme Court decision, justices ruled that the courts should “defer” to executive agencies’  reasonable interpretations of federal statutes.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

 

Rutgers Researchers Observe Unusual Ocean Conditions

January 10, 2024 — Two Rutgers University scientists recently discussed the possible implications of their findings last summer of low dissolved oxygen and pH off the New Jersey coast, which concurred with numerous reported mortalities of fish, lobsters and crabs.

Grace Saba and Josh Kohut work within Rutgers’s Center for Ocean Observing Leadership, in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. The center, as the university notes, maintains the world’s most advanced coastal ocean observatory, with platforms consisting of satellite imagery, a radar network for surface current mapping and waves, and a fleet of long-duration autonomous underwater vehicles, called gliders, equipped with physical, chemical and biological sensors.

Saba, an associate professor, and Kohut, a professor, employed gliders to map ocean water quality measures along the coast, surface to bottom, from late April to late September 2023. As they explained, “From August through September, much of the bottom water sampled from Sandy Hook south to Tuckerton, and from nearshore to deeper depths, exhibited dissolved oxygen concentrations less than 5 mg/liter and pH values less than 7.75.

“Coast-wide, hypoxic levels of dissolved oxygen (concentrations of less than 3 mg/liter) were observed at shallower, more inshore locations. In addition to low pH measured in bottom waters, which is indicative of ocean acidification, aragonite saturation state – a relevant metric for biological impacts of ocean acidification – was calculated to be less than 1 in several locations. Normal, more optimal levels in seawater typically include dissolved oxygen concentrations of more than 7 mg/liter, pH of 8.1, and aragonite saturation states of more than 3.”

Read the full article at the Sand Paper