Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind critics call for investigation of New Jersey whale strandings

January 10, 2023 — Groups opposed to offshore wind energy developments called on federal officials to suspend all survey work on those projects off New Jersey and New York, and investigate recent humpback whale strandings including two dead juvenile whales that washed up at Atlantic City, N.J. two weeks apart.

The New Jersey-based environmental group Clean Ocean Action organized a Monday press conference at Atlantic City and a joint letter to President Biden, demanding a shutdown of all offshore wind development activity in the New York Bight pending an investigation into “the unprecedented number of dead, predominately juvenile, whales washing up in the last 33 days on the New Jersey/New York coastline.”

“Six whales washing-up on the New Jersey/New York coastline in just over a month is unprecedented,” the groups wrote. “As concerning, none of the whales exhibited obvious causes of death such as ship strikes, entanglements, or predator attacks. With one major exception, no clear differences can explain or suggest this alarming number of deaths in the region.

“The exception is the ongoing geological seafloor-mapping and surveying and other pre-construction and construction actions by numerous offshore wind energy developers.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Offshore wind farms threaten New Jersey’s shellfish industry. Should fishing communities be compensated?

January 3, 2022 — Scallops and clams are likely to get more expensive to harvest off New Jersey, as commercial fishing vessels will soon have to compete for ocean space against offshore wind energy companies.

Earlier this month, New Jersey announced it would join eight other states that are seeking a regional approach to compensate fishing communities for the impending losses.

“Are we going to be allowed to fish inside of them (the wind turbine fields)?” asked Kirk O. Larson, a scallop fleet owner and mayor of Barnegat Light, New Jersey. “Why did (the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) put a wind farm right inside of a scallop area, the most productive scallop area pretty much on the East Coast, not counting Georges Bank (a shallow area of ocean off Cape Cod).”

Read the full article at Yahoo News

Much at stake in US Supreme Court review of at-sea monitoring case

December 21, 2022 — Herring fishermen in the U.S. state of New Jersey are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case challenging the at-sea monitoring program, a cause that has gained support from a wide variety of groups.

According to the Cause of Action Institute, which is representing the fishermen suing the federal government, 39 groups are part of 14 amicus briefs that have been filed in the case. That includes attorneys general from 18 states as well as the small business group NFIB, the Cato Institute, several legal foundations, and other fishing-industry stakeholders.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Rate Counsel suggests NJ slow down the pace of offshore wind development

December 15, 2022 — Offshore wind farms in New Jersey should consider scaling back how much new offshore wind capacity is approved next year because economic and financial uncertainties could lead to higher prices, according to the Division of Rate Counsel. 

Rate Counsel Director Brian Lipman suggested slowing down the pace of offshore wind development as higher interest rates, supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures are causing some developers to seek to renegotiate the contracts they have been awarded to build wind farms. 

“This is of great concern,’’ Lipman told the staff of the state Board of Public Utilities Tuesday during a stakeholder meeting. The board was meeting to discuss making a third solicitation for offshore wind projects early next year. Lipman suggested that the board’s staff develop guidelines to prevent after-the-fact increases to contracts awarded to developers. 

Ørsted, the developer of New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm about 15 miles off Atlantic City, has acknowledged it is not earning what it expected on its U.S. projects. If the company seeks to renegotiate its contract, it must file a petition with the BPU, Lipman said. 

Read the full story at NJ Spotlight News

N.J. to Consider Fund to Compensate Fishermen for Revenue Lost to Offshore Wind Development

December 14, 2022 — Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia – on Monday released a Request for Information (RFI) aimed at receiving input from impacted members of the fishing industry, offshore wind developers, corporate and financial management entities, as well as interested members of the public, to inform efforts to establish a regional fisheries compensatory mitigation fund administrator.

The request follows the language of a draft “fisheries mitigation framework” report released in June which calls for “a fair, equitable, and transparent manner for impacted Atlantic Coast fishing industry members and offshore wind developers.”

The states’ RFI seeks feedback on concepts and proposals on how to best establish a single regional administrator for the Atlantic coast to “collect, hold, determine eligibility, and dispense funds for economic losses to affected fishing industry members,” a statement from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said.

Read the full article at Brick

STEFAN AXELSSON: Time to Toss the Administrative State Overboard

December 10, 2022 — The following is an excerpt from an opinion piece published in National Review by Stefan Axelsson. Stefan is a third-generation fisherman from Cape May, New Jersey, and is the captain of the fishing vessel Dyrsten.

If you’re a good driver, you follow the rules of the road, obeying the speed limit, coming to full stops at stop signs, and yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks. And that ought to be enough. But now imagine that the government mandated you carry a state trooper in your passenger seat, one assigned to ensure you obey every traffic law at all times — and one whose salary you were obligated to pay out of your own pocket.

Sound far-fetched? It’s not. Something similar is happening to me today.

I make my living fishing out of Cape May, N.J. While I don’t have a state trooper riding in my car, the federal government makes me carry a monitor on my vessel to observe my activities and report back to the government.

And yes, the government wants to force me to pay the monitor directly — at least when I fish for herring — at a cost of more than $700 a day. That comes on top of an obligation to provide the monitor with a bunk and meals during what can be days-long outings. At times, the monitor is the highest-paid person on the boat, outearning both the captain and the crew.

Federal law gives NOAA the power to force me to carry a monitor on my boat, but it doesn’t give the agency the power to make me pay for the monitor. If Congress had passed a law that allowed NOAA to force herring fishermen to pay for monitors, we could at least use our voices and our votes to check the lawmakers who’d voted for it. But since in this instance a federal agency has tried to do the same thing through an unconstitutional, unilateral power grab, we’ve been forced to settle the issue in the courts.

Our case seemed like a slam dunk to me until I learned about “Chevron deference,” a legal doctrine established in a 1984 Supreme Court decision that effectively requires judges to cede their authority to interpret the law to federal bureaucrats. Judges are supposed to be a check on executive-branch abuses, but Chevron deference turns that upside down and transforms judges into rubber stamps for the whims of the federal bureaucracy.

Read the full opinion piece at National Review

An additional editorial on the issue was recently published by the Washington Times. Read the editorial here.

NEW JERSEY: Fiscal headwinds challenge offshore projects

November 16, 2022 — The offshore wind industry is facing new scrutiny as some initial proposals to build big wind farms off coastal waters are running into unforeseen fiscal challenges driven by high inflation, rising interest rates and continued constraints in the supply chain.

Those factors have led one company to ask to renegotiate its contract to build a 1,200-megawatt offshore wind farm in Massachusetts, a bid so far rejected by regulators there. They have also spurred Public Service Enterprise Group to reconsider its 25% investment in Ørsted’s 1,100-MW project to be built 15 miles off the Atlantic City coast.

Whether those issues are significant enough to slow New Jersey’s aggressive push to be a leader in the emerging industry remains to be seen, but there are critics who hope it does.

“The dirty secret of offshore wind is the economics don’t make sense,’’ said Mike Makarski, a spokesman for Affordable Energy of New Jersey, an organization that has been a persistent critic of the Murphy administration’s plan to shift to 100% clean energy by mid-century.

Read the full article at the New Jersey Spotlight News

New Jersey groundfish fishermen ask US Supreme Court to take up at-sea monitor case

November 15, 2022 — Fishermen from the U.S. state of New Jersey who oppose a federal regulation requiring them to pay for monitors to oversee their trips have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their case.

The New Jersey herring fishermen say a federal law gives NOAA the ability to make them pay up to USD 700 (EUR 680) per day to cover the costs of the monitors – which they claim is often more than what captains and crew members can earn on their trips.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Herring fishermen take at-sea monitoring costs to Supreme Court

November 15, 2022 — Atlantic herring fishermen are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a requirement that they pay for fishery observers at sea, at costs that can exceed $700 a day.

The fishermen’s petition to certify looks to bring their earlier lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce and National Marine Fisheries Service to the high court, after they lost in a federal appeals court.

“We are fighting for our livelihoods and a future that is being unfairly targeted by federal overreach,” said Stefan Axelsson, a third-generation fisherman and captain of one of the vessels in the lawsuit, in a statement from the fishermen and their lawyers on Nov. 10. “These rules could force hardworking fishermen to surrender a significant part of their earnings.”

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey, is associated with several fishing vessels and companies based at Cape May, N.J. The group has fought back against a 2020 rule from the National Marine Fisheries Service that forced vessel operators to pick up the tab for daily at-sea observer coverage. Fishermen say Congress should fund the program.

“Making these vessels pay to have the observer coverage on them just decreases hardworking fishermen’s wages and makes it less attractive for vessels to continue,” said Wayne Reichle, president of Lund’s Fisheries of New Jersey and an owner of two of the boats that are plaintiffs in the case. “In some cases, it prevents them from fishing.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Fishermen take case against paying for monitors to SCOTUS

November 10, 2022 — Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement today petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of several New Jersey fishermen challenging a federal mandate that forces herring fishermen to pay hundreds of dollars out of pocket to host at-sea monitors who observe the fishermen on fishing trips and report their activities to the federal government. The mandate forces herring fishermen to pay monitors as much as $700 per day, which can be more than some boat captains and crew members make on the same trips.

Paul Clement served as United States solicitor general from 2004 to 2008. Over the past three Supreme Court terms, attorneys with Clement & Murphy have argued 14 cases and prevailed in 12. Its team has successfully litigated both alongside and against the United States government, as well as federal agencies, and have successfully secured certiorari over the federal government’s opposition and successfully opposed certiorari when the federal government has sought it.

The following is an excerpt from a story originally published by the Associated Press:

A group of commercial fishermen is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the federal government from making them pay for workers who gather data aboard fishing boats.

The fishermen harvest Atlantic herring off the East Coast and are opposed to a 2020 rule implemented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that requires the industry-funded monitoring. The monitors are workers who collect data on board fishing vessels that are important for informing regulations.

The fishermen, led by main plaintiff Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey, have argued that the requirement forces them to pay more than $700 per day to third-party contractors, and that makes fishing financially unsustainable. They’ve lost in lower court rulings, and filed a petition with the high court on Thursday.

“Making these vessels pay to have the observer coverage on them just decreases hardworking fishermen’s wages and makes it less attractive for vessels to continue,” said Wayne Reichle, president of Lund’s Fisheries of New Jersey and an owner of two of the boats that are plaintiffs in the case. “In some cases, it prevents them from fishing.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press