Saving Seafood

Offshore wind farms planned on East and West coasts

October 19, 2018 — The U.S. government is taking steps to develop offshore wind farms off both coasts.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced this week the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an offshore wind auction Dec. 13 for nearly 390,000 acres (157,831 hectares) of ocean off Massachusetts.

Zinke said the area, if fully developed, could supply power to nearly 1.5 million homes.

He also announced the bureau is opening its environmental review of a 15-turbine project off Long Island, New York, proposed by Deepwater Wind, operators of the nation’s lone commercial wind farm off Rhode Island.

And in California, Zinke announced the bureau is seeking comment on possible areas for wind development off the state’s central and northern coasts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Rep. Zeldin Announces $182,000 Grant for New York Sea Grant Program

October 19, 2018 — Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1), co-chair of the bipartisan Long Island Sound Caucus and member of the Congressional Shellfish Caucus, announced today that New York State Sea Grant has been awarded $182,000 in federal funding by the NOAA National Sea Grant Program. This funding will be used to support the seafood and aquaculture industry, as well as to foster relationships between the industry and next generation of fishermen and other seafood professionals. New York Sea Grant (NYSG) is headquartered at SUNY Stony Brook in New York’s First Congressional District.

Congressman Zeldin said, “New York Sea Grant is a critical program that provides resources to our local anglers and businesses, and this federal funding will help them carry out this important mission. Their vital work helps preserve and support our local fishing industry. With 90% of consumed American seafood imported, we must ensure Long Island fishermen and shellfish farmers have access to the resources they need to sustain and grow their businesses.”

Interim Director of the New York Sea Grant Program Katherine Bunting-Howarth JD PhD said, “NYSG is pleased to partner on a project that promotes sustainable and healthy seafood—seafood that is produced in a manner that protects the environment, invigorates the economy and provides a vital source of protein for our diets.”

National Sea Grant and this $182,000 grant was funded through $72.5 million in federal funding, which Congressman Zeldin helped secure by leading a bipartisan effort of 95 Members of Congress.

Read the full story at LongIsland.com

EDWARD KRAPLES: We need more, not less, competition for offshore wind

October 15, 2018 — The offshore wind era in the United States is here. With no need to burn fossil fuel, to enrich uranium, to dam rivers, or to build thousands of acres of solar panels, offshore wind is the most benign form of bulk power available to mankind.

Plans to seize the potential of offshore wind already have powerful momentum on the East Coast. Between Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey alone, more than 8,000 megawatts of wind power is envisioned. Building out 1,000 megawatts entails up to $5 billion of capital investment, drawing the attention of developers far and wide. So far, European companies — mostly giant, state-spawned enterprises with deep experience in the offshore — have been quickest to recognize this enormous investment opportunity. This week the Danish firm Ørsted bought the only remaining independent US company with offshore wind positions, Deepwater.

Ørsted’s acquisition of Deepwater naturally diminishes the amount of competition for offshore wind contracts. Policy-makers in Massachusetts should immediately take two actions: first, Gov. Charlie Baker should ask the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to increase the number of planned offshore wind lease areas from two to three. Another lease area would assure that the loss of Deepwater as a competitive entrant will be offset by the emergence of a new lease owner off the coast of Massachusetts.

Second, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources should even more strongly promote an ocean grid that serves as a platform for multiple offshore wind developers. The first request for proposals that have solicited offshore power did not stipulate anything about the transmission that will take it to market. Naturally, extremely large and competent offshore wind generators dearly wish to own both the wind farms and the conduit to land and have advanced arguments to the effect that, they, and they alone, can get the job done right.

But letting each generator plan and build and own major transmission lines to shore is akin to letting Walmart plan and build and own the interstate that leads to its stores using its customers money. Bundling generation and transmission limits bidders to the few that have the capacity to do both. Limiting the offshore opportunities to only a few competitors is never good for those paying the bills.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

Judge Tosses Seafood Industry Challenge to East Coast Wind Farm

October 3, 2018 — A seafood industry challenge to a $42.5 million lease for a wind farm off the coast of New York was filed prematurely, a federal judge has ruled.

Led by the Fisheries Survival Fund, the plaintiffs in the case said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to adequately consider how the Statoil Wind US LLC wind energy facility would impact fishermen, along with other environmental and economic impacts.

The plaintiffs also argued that the agency failed to consider adequate alternatives or prepare an environmental impact statement, which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said was unnecessary after determining that there were no foreseeable environmental impacts that would significantly impact the human environment.

But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, while finding that  the Fisheries Survival Fund and the other  plaintiffs had standing to bring claims under the National Environmental Policy Act, ruled Sunday they were not yet ripe.

That’s because Statoil Wind US LLC, the company developing the 26-mile wind farm roughly 11 miles out from Long Island, must first submit its construction and operations plans, along with a site assessment, while the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management retains authority to reject any or all of those.

“The presence of these ‘conditions’ does not transform the lease into an irretrievable commitment of resources,” the 24-page ruling says.

Chutkan later adds: “The lease sale does not represent the final word on anything, nor does it commit any resources, even putting aside the question of whether it does so irretrievably,” the 24-page ruling says.

If its site assessment plan is approved, Statoil will have five years to conduct surveys and propose construction and operations plans.

Read the full story at Courthouse News

Fisheries Survival Fund Expresses Concern Over Recent Ruling in NY Wind Farm Case

October 1, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the Fisheries Survival Fund:

Late yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied a ruling for summary judgment in the ongoing lawsuit against the leased wind farm area in the New York Bight. While the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) is pleased that the court found that the fishing industry and affected port communities have standing to bring claims in the case, we are concerned with other aspects of the ruling.

Specifically, we are troubled by the court’s finding that our claims under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are not ‘ripe.’  The court held that, because the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) retains some authority to preclude surface disturbing activities in the period between issuing a lease and the approval of a construction and operations plan, the lease itself does not constitute the irretrievable transfer of resources required under NEPA. The court found that the “lease sale does not represent the final word on anything, nor does it commit any resources, even putting aside the question of whether it does so irretrievably.”

This suggests that the court views the lease as something akin to a ‘ticket’ to proceed, rather than a guarantee of any rights.  Just as a concertgoer’s ticket can be revoked by a venue for inappropriate behavior, the court seems to contend that the leaseholder’s ‘ticket’ for at-sea development can be revoked by BOEM at any time. But in fact, judicial precedent interpreting the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) has held that the leaseholder gains more rights as development proceeds, and as more time and money are invested in a project.  This means that, the further development proceeds, the more difficult it becomes for plaintiffs to overturn a leasing decision.

We are concerned that the court’s view of the case as premature at the leasing stage, combined with case law finding a leasing challenge too late at the construction and operation plan phase, leaves plaintiffs with no opportunity to challenge this siting decision.

We are encouraged the court never contested our view that the unsolicited bid procedure allowed BOEM to decide, behind closed doors, what area of the ocean was to be leased. But we are troubled by the court’s ruling that our OCSLA claims are barred because we did not comply with the provision requiring 60 days notice of an intended filing. We were not able to provide 60 days’ notice, because BOEM scheduled the lease sale only 45 days after publication of the Final Sale Notice.

The court held that we were not excused from compliance with the 60-day notice period because the statute does not require BOEM to schedule its lease sales with sufficient time to accommodate potential claimants. If the court’s position is upheld, BOEM apparently would have the ability to lease any portion of the ocean unchallenged, and would deny any harmed parties their right to challenge a proposed lease sale under the OCSLA.  We believe given these circumstances that we should have been granted an exemption from this requirement.

About the Fisheries Survival Fund
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) was established in 1998 to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Atlantic sea scallop fishery.  FSF participants include the vast majority of full-time Atlantic scallop fishermen from Maine to North Carolina.  FSF works with academic institutions and independent scientific experts to foster cooperative research and to help sustain this fully-rebuilt fishery.  FSF also works with the federal government to ensure that the fishery is responsibly managed.

BOEM looking at traffic lanes, buffers for offshore wind power

September 24, 2018 — Concerns raised by the maritime and commercial fishing industries now have federal officials considering wider buffer areas, and spacing as far as two nautical miles between proposed offshore wind power turbines.

At meetings in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, representatives of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the burden of proof is on offshore wind energy development companies to show their plans for turbine arrays will be compatible with other ocean industries.

“Right now we’re asking developers to prove that fishermen can still fish” if offshore turbines are built, said Amy Stillings, an economist with BOEM.

The agency is also looking at setting aside a corridor for shipping and barge traffic cutting across the New York Bight, which extends from Cape May Inlet, N.J., to Montauk Point, N.Y., on the eastern tip of Long Island, to maintain a safe buffer between future turbine arrays and vessel traffic.

That idea for a cross-Bight corridor nine nautical miles wide – a five-mile traffic lane, with two-mile buffers on either side – recognizes trends in maritime transportation that allow towing vessels to take the route farther offshore than the traditional paths closer to shore.

Read the full story at Work Boat

 

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind energy: Fishermen ask for relief

September 21, 2018 — Offshore windmills may be the future of energy here, but they’re presently a source of agitation to commercial fishermen.

A vocal group of them, who aren’t necessarily opposed to windmills but just the placement of them on or near fishing grounds, which if you ask them is anywhere the water is salt, gave the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management their two cents at a public meeting Thursday.

BOEM oversees offshore wind for the U.S. Department of Interior and is in the planning stages of selecting ocean floor off the New Jersey coast for windmill placement.

The agency was at the Long Branch Public Library to present information collected in a recent public comment period and call for interest among offshore energy companies.

“All of these areas are prime scallop grounds. We’re not going to take any of this lying down,” said Arthur Osche, a member of the Point Pleasant Fishermen’s Dock Co-operative.

Osche was referring to fishing grounds in Hudson North and Hudson South, two designated wind farm lease sites that start about 17 miles east of the coastline here.

The two sites are grouped into the New York Bight Call Area, which also contains two lease sites off the Long Island. The four sites total 2,047 square nautical miles, which is equivalent 2,710 square miles on land.

BOEM’s officials announced they have nine energy companies waiting to potentially make a bid on the lease areas.

Scallops are the state’s most valuable seafood commodity. In 2016, the commercial scallop harvest brought in $123 million, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data.

Fellow co-operative dock member Jim Lovgren said if their access to the grounds is restricted by the windmills then they should be paid for the economic loss.

“Mark off the area and then compensate us,” said Lovgren.

U.S. commercial fishermen can be compensated for property and economic loss due to energy development on the outer continental shelf through the Fishermen’s Contingency Fund.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

‘You’re impacting the whole resource’

September 19, 2018 — Fishermen and city officials raised the alarm Tuesday about potential wind turbines in prime fishing and scalloping grounds south of Long Island.

About 55 people attended a meeting with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to discuss the agency’s evaluation of possible offshore wind locations within a 2,300-square-mile portion of the New York Bight, between Long Island and New Jersey.

Scalloper Eric Hansen said 40 to 50 percent of the scalloping grounds fished by New Bedford scallopers is within the area the federal government is considering leasing to wind developers, and if fishing there becomes dangerous, people will fish harder in the remaining places.

“You’re impacting the whole resource,” he said.

Bureau staff said they want to narrow down the areas to be leased for wind turbines, not use the entire space.

“We have no intention of leasing that whole area,” BOEM spokesman Stephen Boutwell said in an interview before the meeting.

But fishermen were skeptical.

“That’s a hope and not a promise right now, from our perspective,” David Frulla, a scallop industry attorney, said in an interview. “We think this is way overboard and needs to be reconsidered. And we’re actively opposing it.”

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell addressed the meeting, calling the potential effect on fishing “very alarming.”

“There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to allow for the development of offshore wind,” he said.

The federal agency has indicated to developers that 80,000 acres would be a reasonable project size — compared to the nearly 1.5 million acres contained within the four areas under consideration: Fairways North, Fairways South, Hudson North and Hudson South.

The mayor cited government data showing a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of scallops were harvested in the four areas over a five-year period ending in 2016. He said a small fraction of the total acreage would satisfy New York’s renewable energy goals, and that those goals could be satisfied by unused areas off Massachusetts that have already been through this process.

Amy Stillings, an economist with BOEM, said Mitchell framed the conversation well, and research does show a lot of fishing happens in the New York Bight.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

The New York Bight – a Hydra of Difficult Issues

September 18, 2018 — Amidst an atmosphere of possible resurgence in the domestic offshore oil energy, maritime stakeholders are also reminded that there is more than one kind of energy available for development off the four collective coasts of the United States. That process is underway in the Great Lakes; it has already happened off of New England. To that end, and last April, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) published a ‘Call for Information and Nominations.’

This ‘Call’ started a formal process for BOEM to gather information about developers’ interest in commercial wind energy leases in the Atlantic outer continental shelf. More specifically, this meant within sections of the New York Bight, the portion of the Atlantic extending northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. The comment period was first set to close at the end of May, but it was extended to the end of July.

BOEM will use the comments to first gauge the interest among energy project developers, and secondly, to assess the broader concerns associated with possible wind energy projects within the Bight. There already is interest in this set of Call Areas. In December 2016, for example, BOEM received an unsolicited lease request from PNE Wind USA, Inc. (PNE) for 40,920 acres offshore New York. PNE seeks a lease to develop a 300–400 MW project, primarily within the Call Area Fairways South. Beyond this, BOEM’s map lists Statoil, US Wind and Ocean Wind as also having interests in various lease areas.

Curiously, offshore wind – that long awaited renewable source of energy – has as many detractors as its dirtier fossil fuel cousins.

Read the full story at Marine Link

CAP Report: Vulnerable Lobster and Oyster in New England, More ‘Funny Fish’ in Mid-Atlantic

September 17, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Center for American Progress released a new report earlier this week called “Warming Seas Falling Fortunes.” In it, fishermen on the front lines of climate change describe the impact of warming oceans on their jobs and communities.

In a five-part series, SeafoodNews is summarizing the report. Today we look at the Mid-Atlantic and New England. On Monday, we cover the West Coast and on Tuesday, the Alaska fishing industry.

Along the Mid-Atlantic coast, commercial and recreational fishing are important economic drivers. In 2015, the fishing industries in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia supported over 117,000 jobs and generated $15.6 billion in sales. Yet, fishing in all three states is under threat as researchers see marine species shifting an average of 0.7 of a degree of latitude, or roughly 50 miles, north and 15 meters deeper in the water.

Fishermen from these states are seeing the same phenomena.

“Summer flounder off the coast of New York are having poor spawning seasons; everyone is switching to black sea bass, which have become more abundant due to warming waters,” said Charles Witek, an attorney and avid saltwater angler. I never caught a black sea bass in Long Island Sound, in all 27 summers that I lived in Connecticut. Now, they are an important part of the regional fishery.”

“I never caught a black sea bass in Long Island Sound, in all 27 summers that I lived in Connecticut. Now, they are an important part of the regional fishery.”

Dolphinfish, commonly known as mahi-mahi, are a tropical fish traditionally caught between Florida and North Carolina. Now, they are increasingly found in the waters off New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

“When I started fishing offshore in the early ‘80s, once in a while, someone got a dolphin[fish], but only when the warm canyon water came inshore,” Witek said.

“But they were targets of opportunity. … Now, I go out looking for dolphin[fish], and so do a lot of people. My wife and I go out and we catch all that we want. A friend of mine is a charter boat captain and is always talking about how he has dolphin[fish] on top chasing bait.”

Scientific research indicates that the wide-ranging species is sensitive to sea surface temperature and is caught recreationally only in waters warmer than 66.2 degrees Fahrenheit, while catch rates peak at 80.6 degrees F.

Fishermen are also reporting noticing more “funny fish,” or unusual species showing up in their waters. “You can cast a net under lights in Virginia and catch Gulf shrimp—not grass shrimp, Gulf shrimp. The guys that are running oyster aquaculture, it’s becoming common to see Nassau grouper juveniles in the cage—you see it, and you think you’re the only one. Two weeks later, someone else has got one too,” explained Tony Friedrich, former executive director for Maryland’s Coastal Conservation Association and an avid recreational fisherman in Maryland. He added, “I know it’s hard to believe, but adult tarpon

“You can cast a net under lights in Virginia and catch Gulf shrimp—not grass shrimp, Gulf shrimp. The guys that are running oyster aquaculture, it’s becoming common to see Nassau grouper juveniles in the cage—you see it, and you think you’re the only one. Two weeks later, someone else has got one too,” explained Tony Friedrich, former executive director for Maryland’s Coastal Conservation Association and an avid recreational fisherman in Maryland.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but adult tarpon are becoming frequent summer visitors to the southern Delmarva Peninsula,” he added.

Witek also mentioned that “funny fish” are becoming the norm. “Juvenile red drum, croakers, 90-pound cobia have all been caught in New York and shouldn’t be this far north. We are starting to see more tropical fish on a regular basis.”

These changes in the distribution of marine fisheries along the Atlantic coast, as well as changes throughout all U.S. waters, are compiled in the OceanAdapt portal, developed by Malin Pinsky’s research lab at Rutgers University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It illustrates the same trends that are being projected by climate models. The waters along the Northeast are predicted to increase between 1.8 degrees and 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 50 years. As waters warm, and poleward environments become more hospitable for tropical species, fishermen will continue to see more and more of these “funny fish.” Changes in forage fish abundance, habitat loss, and other changes to food web dynamics due to warming waters and changes in ocean chemistry may also contribute to shifts in marine species.

The waters along the Northeast are predicted to increase between 1.8 degrees and 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 50 years. As waters warm, and poleward environments become more hospitable for tropical species, fishermen will continue to see more and more of these “funny fish.” Changes in forage fish abundance, habitat loss, and other changes to food web dynamics due to warming waters and changes in ocean chemistry may also contribute to shifts in marine species.

In New England, the cod fishery is perhaps the most historic and the most troublesome of American fisheries. Decades of intense fishing pressure and overfishing caused the cod populations of the Northeast to almost disappear entirely.

Strict management plans and catch limits slowly helped the stock recover, but cod populations in New England remain low. Research now suggests that climate change, specifically ocean warming in the Gulf of Maine, has hindered the cod population’s ability to rebuild.

The Gulf of Maine has experienced a warming trend of 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit per year since 1982, and the Gulf’s sea surface temperature is warming 99 percent faster than the rest of the global ocean. Warm water hinders the ability of some fish to spawn and has also been linked to smaller body size.

The lobster industry is among those in trouble. Lobster that was once plentiful in southern New England have largely disappeared from those rapidly warming waters over the past 10 years. Instead, the perfect water temperature for lobsters is now found off the coast of Maine, leading to a boom in Maine’s lobster profits. Between 2005 and 2014, Maine lobstermen earned an average of $321 million per year in revenue and supported more than 4,000 harvesting jobs in Maine since 2013.

But fishermen are wary of the longevity of this success if the growing rate of carbon emissions is not addressed.

“Lobsters have become our only major fishery,” said Richard Nelson, a commercial lobsterman in Friendship, Maine. “And it’s gotten to a bad point, because we have become so dependent on a single species and yet know so little about the impacts of warming and ocean acidification.”

Ocean acidification is an ongoing process of the planet’s seawater becoming more acidic as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. The resulting increased acidity has harmful effects that we see in coral bleaching, slow growth of shells in mollusks and shellfish, and other impacts scientists are just discovering. That has led some scientists to describe ocean acidification, distinct from global warming, as a more damaging result of increased carbon in the atmosphere.

Nelson has been in the lobster fishery for more than 30 years. He also participated in Maine’s Ocean Acidification Commission, a multistakeholder group that formed in 2014 to assess the state of the scientific research on acidification, as well as the impact that acidification is having on commercially important species.

“So far, what we know is that [the lobster] are affected by multiple stressors, such as warming and acidification together, a combination that has shown changes in respiration and swimming rates. We also see this same warming, when joined with nutrient runoff, helps create coastal acidification and also aggravates toxic algal blooms,” Nelson said. “People have to pay attention to the whole thing.”

Lobsters aren’t the only species affected by climate change in Maine. Bill Mook, owner of Mook Sea Farm, one of the largest oyster producers in Maine, started noticing that his oyster larvae were experiencing disruptions and abnormal development. When this began affecting his business, his team started to treat the seawater used in their hatcheries to make it less acidic.

Mook’s efforts worked, and his oysters grew properly with this treatment. He believes ocean acidification was to blame for the development problems. From 2003 through 2014, the Atlantic Ocean absorbed more than twice as much carbon dioxide than it did from 1989 through 2003, which has led to a measurable drop in pH.

Mook also thinks that freshwater runoff is further reducing the pH of ocean water, making it harder for his oysters to grow. Northeast climate models predict an increase in annual average rainfall as climate change intensifies.

This pattern of increased freshwater runoff is even changing the color of the water in the Gulf of Maine. William “Barney” Balch at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has been sampling waters from the Gulf of Maine for more than 18 years and found that the fresh water’s yellow color competes with phytoplankton for the wavelengths they need for photosynthesis—ultimately impeding their ability to nourish themselves.

Through his research and analysis, Balch has showed a potential fivefold decrease in primary productivity in the Gulf of Maine over the past decade.

Mook also has to deal with additional food safety concerns linked to the warming climate.

“Warming waters also require additional steps to ensure our oysters are safe to eat, because pathogenic strains of the bacteria—Vibrio parahaemolyticus—are more abundant. If oysters sit on the deck of the boat and are not immediately cooled down, the bacteria can multiply rapidly and cause people to get sick. This never used to be a concern,” he said.

In response, oyster growers and the Maine Department of Marine Resources have worked together to establish regulations aimed at maintaining safe-to-eat oysters.

Meanwhile, in southern New England, fishermen are catching more black sea bass than they are legally allowed to land. Historically, states from Rhode Island to Maine have a much lower quota for black sea bass, since this species is normally found off the coast of North Carolina.

But as black sea bass move north and North Carolina fishing vessels are forced to travel farther distances for their catch, a management problem occurs — fishermen in the northern states are forced to throw their overages away, so are tossing fish overboard.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.