Saving Seafood

2026 Spring Habitat Camera Survey Completed in Northeast

October 15, 2026 — Our Habitat Camera (HabCam) Survey uses a towed camera sled system to collect images of the seafloor. We analyze the images to estimate the abundance and size composition of Atlantic sea scallops. The sea scallop abundance, size composition, and distribution data are used annually as part of the sea scallop stock assessment and management processes. The survey is one of the primary fishery-independent surveys used in the sea scallop stock assessment model.

We also annotate the images for other seafloor features and animals such as crabs and finfish. We conduct the survey in the Mid-Atlantic Bight and Georges Bank. Because the camera sled is towed behind the vessel, the survey can sample more seafloor than traditional sea scallop survey methods.

Dates and Legs

The 2026 HabCam Survey began on May 11, 2026 and completed operations on May 29, 2026. We conducted the Spring survey aboard the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow and it occurred in two legs:

  • Leg 1: May 11–19 in Mid-Atlantic Bight
  • Leg 2: May 20–29 in Georges Bank

Survey Location

This survey monitored the Mid-Atlantic and Georges Bank Atlantic Sea Scallop management areas:

In the Mid-Atlantic, the survey monitored:

  • Delmarva
  • Elephant Trunk
  • Hudson Canyon South
  • A mid-line through New York Bight and Long Island
  • Mid-Atlantic Bight Nearshore areas

In Georges Bank, the survey monitored:

  • Nantucket Lightship-West
  • CL1 (Groundfish Closed Area 1)
  • Northern Flank
  • CL2-North (Groundfish Closed Area 2)
  • Great South Channel

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Trump Administration to Buy Back Four More Offshore Wind Leases

June 18, 2026 — Continuing its strategy of canceling offshore wind projects by buying back the leases in exchange for other energy investments, the Department of the Interior announced its third agreement. The administration has committed nearly $2.6 billion to canceling offshore wind leases even as the strategy is being challenged in court and by regulators.

Invenergy will voluntarily terminate four offshore wind leases it purchased in the past from the government and will redirect the investments toward other domestic energy sources, said the Department of the Interior. It valued the four leases at $765 million for one lease in the New York Bight for a New Jersey wind farm, two for floating offshore wind farms in Maine, and one off the coast of California.

The largest and most advanced of the projects was Leading Light Wind, which had submitted its offshore wind project bid to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) in August 2023. It called for up to 2.4 GW, which would have made it the largest in the United States. It would have been more than 40 miles off the coast near Atlantic City, New Jersey, and included a battery storage option that would provide 253 MW of advanced energy storage, but it had yet to submit a Construction and Operations Plan proposal to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

U.S. is Negotiating to Cancel More Offshore Wind Leases

April 22, 2026 — Executives at the French company Engie confirmed today that they are in discussions with U.S. officials about possibly canceling their offshore wind farm leases. Last month, the administration agreed to reimburse TotalEnergies for its offshore wind leases and hinted it might use the same technique with others, although advocates and lawmakers are questioning the legal authority.

The Trump administration said in March that it had agreed to reimburse TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion it had paid to acquire a large lease in the New York Bight, which was to host two large wind farms, as well as a small property off North Carolina. The administration called it a win, saying the company had agreed to reinvest the money in the U.S. LNG sector, where it has a project underway.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

BOEM Completes First Region Environmental Review for Offshore Wind

October 22, 2024 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed its first regional environmental assessment as part of its continuing effort to accelerate the development of offshore wind energy power generation. The Final Programmatic Environmental Impact States for the New York Bight will be released later this week as a key step to move forward with the six large lease areas from the record February 2022 auction.

“We believe our regional approach will provide a solid baseline for future environmental reviews for any proposed offshore wind projects in the New York Bight,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. It is the next key step in the Biden-Harris administration’s goal to have 30 GW offshore wind energy capacity by 2030. They note that the U.S. surpassed approval for 15 GW of offshore wind energy capacity earlier this year.

BOEM reports it received 1,568 unique comments from 560 submissions which informed this stage of the development project which was designed to set a structure for the environmental review of the six projects.  The six wind lease areas in the NY Bight cover over 488,000 acres offshore New York and New Jersey with BOEM estimating it has a capacity to generate up to 7 GW of offshore wind energy, enough to power up to two million homes.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Farther offshore, next New York Bight wind leases still draw opponents

February 12, 2024 — Six offshore wind lease areas in the New York Bight are more than 30 miles offshore of the region’s bustling suburbs and seaside resorts – distance that might have defused resistance to the wind energy projects before.

Now opposition groups that grew in reaction to nearshore projects, like Ørsted’s cancelled Ocean Wind plan off New Jersey, show few signs they will accept a new round of proposals farther east to the horizon.

Over 100 visitors walked through a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management public scoping session Feb. 8 in a Toms River, N.J., hotel meeting room, talking to BOEM workers and giving the agency testimony in video interviews and writing. The agency has grown to prefer the low-key scoping process – in-person and online – to fulfill its legal obligations to gather public input short of full-blown public hearings.

The visitors were not shy with opinions.

“What we’re really worried about is the cabling. It’s death,” said Ed Baxter, a commercial fisherman with the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.

The offshore leases now being planned for wind power development would need turbine towers linked by a network of power cables, and linked by energy export cables coming ashore near New York City and Sea Girt, N.J. A future cable network would potentially shut mobile gear fisheries like scallop dredging out of those routes, if fishermen can’t be safe that their gear won’t snag on cables, said Baxter.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Survey conflicts test relations between wind, fishing industries

April 27, 2022 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and offshore wind energy developers are pledging to do better by commercial fishermen – with fisheries studies, scout boats to head off survey conflicts with fishing gear, and bringing on highly experienced and respected fishermen as industry liaisons.

Incidents of survey boats towing through fixed gear in Mid-Atlantic waters are putting those processes to the test. Conch and black sea bass trap fishermen who have had gear damaged off the Delmarva coast and New Jersey brought their complaints to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

At an April 5 briefing Amanda Lefton, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and wind developers Ørsted and Atlantic Shores updated the regional fishery management council on plans for two adjacent turbine projects off Atlantic City and Long Beach Island, N.J. – and BOEM’s recent $4.37 billion sale of New York Bight wind leases that could become even bigger arrays farther out on the continental shelf.

Then they heard from fishermen who have seen their conch and black sea bass gear dragged and damaged by survey vessels working on wind leases off New Jersey and the Delmarva peninsula.

New Jersey captain Joe Wagner Jr. told the council how he lost 157 bass traps in 2021 during a survey around the Ørsted Ocean Wind project area.

“The only reason I got somewhat of a payment (compensation) is because I caught their vessel at 3 o’clock in the morning pulling three of my high flyers behind their boat,” said Wagner.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Bidding tops $3.3 billion in New York Bight wind lease sale

February 25, 2022 — The biggest U.S. offshore wind energy lease sale ever will continue Friday, after two days of steadily escalating bids that topped at $3.3 billion with no clear winners at 6 p.m. Thursday.

After 46 rounds of bidding that began at 9 a.m. Feb. 23, the most-sought of six lease tracts – dubbed OCS-0539, east-southeast of Barnegat Light, N.J. – attracted up to five bidders at a time who pushed offers to $900 million.

After running the bids at 20-minute intervals, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officials said they will resume at 9 a.m. Friday. The agency will announce provisional winners of the online auction.

Covering 488,201 acres, the sale is the largest of the Biden administration and the first wind auction since 2018. Farther east from areas already leased to developers off New Jersey, the new leases roughly double the New York Bight acreage available for building wind turbine arrays.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

BOEM looks at fishermen compensation — but not everyone wants it

February 24, 2022 — Recent detailed proposals from the Fisheries Survival Fund and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance – coalitions of the commercial fishing industry – and the American Clean Power Association representing the offshore wind industry, presented the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management priority lists for their industries’ coexistence.

Some of those recommendations distinguish between ‘mitigation’ – avoiding conflicts between wind development and fishing – and ‘compensation’ – paying to make up for fishermen being displaced from longtime fishing grounds.

Fishing advocates say BOEM should be following a “mitigation hierarchy” under the National Environmental Policy Act to “avoid, minimize, mitigate and compensate” for impacts of offshore wind development.

BOEM officials and wind energy advocates say that’s being done. As examples they point to modifications to the South Fork Wind project east of Montauk, N.Y., to preserve critical bottom habitat, and shifts in the New York Bight wind energy lease areas to reduce conflicts with the scallop fleet.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

What to watch in Biden’s first offshore wind auction

February 24, 2022 — The Biden administration will hold a long-awaited offshore wind auction today, with both established players in the developing industry and new competitors expected to vie for a chance to raise turbines in the shallow-water region sandwiched between New Jersey and New York.

Industry has long pushed for a new auction in the New York Bight, where developers haven’t seen a lease sale since 2016, and expectations are high that it could result in a blockbuster sale.

“These leases will, in all likelihood, fetch historically high prices,” said Fred Zalcman, director of New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which advocates for the industry. “I think it’s going to be a very vibrant market.”

The bight offers acreage between two states with some of the most aggressive offshore wind targets in the country.

Read the full story at E&E News

5-Year Reviews for the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, and Chesapeake Bay Distinct Population Segments (DPS) of Atlantic Sturgeon

February 17, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today, NOAA Fisheries is releasing the 5-Year Reviews for the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, and Chesapeake Bay Distinct Population Segments (DPS) of Atlantic sturgeon. These reviews summarize and evaluate new information on the status of each DPS and its major threats, using new data that has become available since the DPSs were listed in 2012.

Each DPS continues to be at a low level of abundance, and stressors including bycatch, vessel strikes, habitat loss and alteration, and global climate change lead us to recommend that the Gulf of Maine DPS remains listed as threatened, and the New York Bight and Chesapeake Bay DPSs remain listed as endangered. The reports further identify recommendations for future actions to promote the recovery of each of the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, and Chesapeake Bay DPSs of Atlantic sturgeon. The 5-year reviews for the Carolina and South Atlantic DPSs of Atlantic sturgeon are on-going.