Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: NJ Commercial Fisheries Sue Trump Admin. For Allowing Wind Farm To Proceed

June 11, 2025 — Last Tuesday, multiple New Jersey fishermen and other groups — including Belford Seafood Co-op in Middletown — sued U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum for his sudden reversal to allow construction on Empire Wind farm to proceed.

You can read the lawsuit here.

Empire Wind will be a very large (80,000 acres of ocean) wind farm 19 miles off Long Branch, a distance too far out for turbines to be visible from shore. Empire Wind is owned by Norwegian renewable energy company Equinor, which has a contract with New York state to provide electricity to homes on Long Island.

On April 16, Burgum issued a halt-work order to Empire Wind, citing President Trump’s ban on all new offshore wind development, which Trump announced on his very first day in office.

But then just one month later, on May 20, the Trump administration reversed course and lifted the order. Reuters reported last week Equinor was allowed to proceed because of a deal Burgum and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reached where she agreed to allow canceled plans for a natural gas pipeline in New York state to be revived. In return, Empire Wind could resume work it already started, which includes laying rock on the sea floor.

The June 3 lawsuit seeks to have the stop-work order reinstated. In addition to Belford Seafood Co-op, many familiar Jersey Shore names and commercial fishing companies signed on, including:

Clean Ocean Action (the same group that hosts beach clean-ups every spring); Fisherman’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach; the “Miss Belmar” fishing and sightseeing boat, which docks in Neptune under Captain Alan Shinn; Lund’s Fisheries in Cape May and Seaside Park Mayor John Peterson, a Republican.

Commercial fishermen in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Long Island also joined the lawsuit.

The lawsuit sues the United States of America, Interior Secretary Burgum, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, under acting director Walter Cruickshank, Equinor and the kingdom of Norway.

Read the full article at the Patch

NEW JERSEY: Atlantic Shores is pulling the plug on its wind farm off South Jersey (at least for now)

June 10, 2025 — Atlantic Shores is pulling the plug on its offshore wind farm project in South Jersey, saying President Donald Trump’s war on wind and worsening economics for the fledgling industry have made the project “no longer viable.”

The project, which lost its partner when Shell pulled out, also was stripped of a key environmental permit, without which the project cannot be built.

On June 4, the company filed a petition with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities asking to terminate the order approving the project.

In a statement from its CEO, Atlantic Shores seemed to indicate it remains open to future offshore wind projects, calling the request “a reset period.”

“This filing marks the closing of a chapter, but not the end for Atlantic Shores,” said Joris Veldhoven. “Offshore wind continues to offer New Jersey a strong value proposition that includes thousands of good paying jobs, stable power prices, and real economic benefits.

“While no ratepayer money or subsidy was spent on Atlantic Shores Project 1, this reset period presents us an opportunity to ensure utility customers continue to get a fair deal for critical infrastructure delivery,” he said. “And with record demand for electricity outpacing supply, one thing’s for sure: New Jersey needs more power generation.

“Atlantic Shores stands ready to deliver high-capacity factor projects that will safeguard American business interests, support energy security, and improve quality of life for millions of Garden State residents,” he said.

A company spokeswoman hinted that Atlantic Shores could propose new projects once conditions improve.

Read the full article at the The Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: NOAA Says Longterm Environmental Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Projects Not Certain

June 5, 2025 — A recent federal symposium has highlighted significant scientific gaps in the ability to assess the environmental impacts of offshore wind development, raising questions about how New Jersey’s rapidly advancing offshore wind projects could affect local marine ecosystems and coastal communities.

At the “State of the Science” symposium on offshore wind last year, officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) presented what they described as serious “constraints” in efforts to build ecosystem models for offshore wind development (OWD).

These findings, disclosed in court filings this week, underscore concerns surrounding current and future offshore wind construction along the New Jersey coast.

Read the full article at Shore News Network

NEW JERSEY: Lawmakers mull measure to ban octopus farming in New Jersey

May 28, 2025 — Aquaculture farmers in New Jersey grow everything from clams and oysters to trout, bass, and other fish popular with sport anglers.

They don’t farm octopuses. Several state lawmakers want to keep it that way and now are pushing legislation that would ban businesses from raising octopuses in captivity to sell as seafood.

Washington and California already have such bans in place. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) introduced a bill last summer in Congress that would have enacted a national ban, but it failed to advance. The only known octopus farm in the U.S., in Hawaii, shut down in 2023 after years of advocacy by animal rights activists, and a Spanish company’s plan to farm octopuses in the Canary Islands has also drawn opposition.

In Trenton Thursday, the Senate’s economic growth committee heard testimony on a bill that also would prohibit businesses from selling, possessing, or transporting farmed octopuses, with violators facing fines of up to $1,000 a day. They did not vote on the measure, with committee chair and bill sponsor Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez saying she would use public feedback to improve the bill.

“Why are we passing a law now to ban something which isn’t even happening in the state of New Jersey?” said Scot Mackey of the Garden State Seafood Association, which represents more than 1,200 commercial fishermen.

Read the full article at New Jersey Monitor

Trump Faces Challenge to Offshore Wind Directive

May 8, 2025 — New Jersey is one of nearly two dozen states plus the District of Columbia to sue the federal government over President Donald J. Trump’s executive order halting approvals of wind energy development.

“It is deeply disappointing that the Trump administration is illegally attempting to block our state from developing new sources of power through their across-the-broad freeze on wind energy,” state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.

With the stroke of his pen, Trump temporarily withdrew offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf and implemented a review of the federal government’s leasing and permitting practices for wind energy on Jan. 20, the same day he declared a national energy emergency.

The order went into effect Jan. 21 and will remain in place unless it is repealed. The rights of existing leases in the withdrawn areas are not impacted by the withdrawal, under the memorandum.

Read the full story at The SandPaper

Why the Fishing Industry Fought: Inside the Battle Over Chevron

May 2, 2025 — Wayne Reichle – who’s been in the fishing business his whole life – had never heard of the Chevron doctrine. That’s the two-step legal test that courts used for the past 40 years to decide whether a federal agency had the authority to make a regulation.

“No idea,” said Reichle, president of New Jersey-based Lund’s Fisheries. “Myself, and many, many fellow fishermen had no idea what the Chevron doctrine was.”

That changed after a group of fishermen challenged a federal regulation requiring the herring industry to pay for onboard federal observers. “I think there’s quite a few that know what the Chevron doctrine is today,” Reichle said.

This season on UnCommon Law, we’re exploring the limits of agency power. To what extent are federal agencies authorized to create and implement regulations that aren’t explicitly mandated by Congress? And what happens when an agency goes too far? In this episode, the story of the fishermen who fought back.

Listen to the full story at Bloomberg Law

Sens. Sullivan, Booker reintroduce Keep Finfish Free Act

May 1, 2025 — Legislation to prohibit federal agencies from issuing permits or taking other action to authorize or facilitate commercial finfish aquaculture operations in the exclusive economic zone was reintroduced in the U.S. Senate on April 30 by Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J. and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.

The Keep Finfish Free Act, which would apply to all waters from 3-200 nautical miles offshore, is a step consistent with current Alaska state law, which bans offshore finfish farming in state waters.

“This legislation would ban risky fish farming operations in federal waters that could jeopardize the health of our fish species and undermine Alaska’s coastal fishing communities,” Sullivan said.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times

Government watchdog study finds some problems – and much uncertainty – in offshore wind industry

April 14, 2025 — A study on offshore wind development by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – one that’s been nearly two years in the making – was at last released today, and it identifies a number of potential problems with the industry but few concrete answers.

The 68-page report acknowledges that building massive wind turbines off America’s coastline, including along the Jersey Shore, could have a variety of impacts on commercial fishing, marine ecosystems, defense radar systems, and local communities. But it also stresses how much is still uncertain about what’s still a relatively new industry.

“Development and operation of offshore wind energy facilities could affect marine life and ecosystems, including through acoustic disturbance and changes to marine habitats,” the GAO report declares in its introduction. “Wind development could bring jobs and investment to communities. At the same time, it could disrupt commercial fishing to varying degrees. Turbines could also affect radar system performance, alter search and rescue methods, and alter historic and cultural landscapes.”

“Because technology and implementation are still developing, the extent of some impacts is unknown,” it later states. “In addition, uncertainty exists about long-term and cumulative effects, but research and monitoring activities are ongoing to better understand potential impacts.”

The report was first commissioned in 2023, at a time when offshore wind was commanding headlines in New Jersey. That year, a number of dead whales washing up along the Jersey Shore prompted calls from local and national Republican politicians to halt offshore wind development, though federal scientific agencies said at the time that the deaths did not appear to be connected to the construction of wind turbines (something that the GAO reiterated in its study today).

Read the full article at New Jersey Globe

Are whales endangered by offshore wind turbines? NJ group calls for pause on development.

April 11, 2025 — Two federal agencies are reviewing a petition from an environmental group to create a protected migration corridor in the Atlantic Ocean, including off New Jersey, for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The outcome of the review could have major implications for Gov. Phil Murphy and his administration’s “green energy” efforts. The corridor and its buffer zone would run through areas where New Jersey officials have focused their offshore wind turbine development.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office declined comment on the petition.

Read the full article at the Cherry Hill Courier-Post