Saving Seafood

NOAA Partners With Offshore Wind Industry on Environmental Monitoring

September 18, 2023 — NOAA and Community Offshore Wind (COSW) – a joint venture between RWE and National Grid Ventures – have signed a 5-year cooperative research and development agreement to exchange data and expertise. The agreement focuses on informing development of an environmental monitoring program for COSW’s offshore wind project off New York and New Jersey.

The partnership is the first of its kind in the offshore wind industry, creating a platform for developers and federal experts to work together in monitoring potential impacts of development on marine ecosystems.

The research cooperation also supports NOAA’s ongoing environmental monitoring across the New York Bight. This process will inform best practices for establishing environmental observation systems on new offshore wind projects in the region.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

The Government Takes On a Fisherman Over 200,000 Pounds of Fluke

September 14, 2023 — It was just before dawn when Chris Winkler, a fisherman in Montauk, N.Y., set off on his trawler, the New Age.

A longhaired surfer who looks far younger than his 63 years, Mr. Winkler was in flip-flops and shorts, trailed by Murphy, a good-natured Irish water spaniel who is usually his only company.

But on that July day, he had others aboard: members of his legal team and a reporter. He was gearing up for a federal trial that began this week in Central Islip, N.Y., before Judge Joan M. Azrack on charges of taking more fish from the sea than the law allows.

Prosecutors say that in past years Mr. Winkler exceeded the limit on fluke, a spotted flat fish also known as summer flounder, by at least 200,000 pounds, and caught more black sea bass than was allowed.

He is accused of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit deals with of one of Montauk’s most venerable seafood institutions, Gosman’s. The two men originally charged with him, Bryan and Asa Gosman, cut deals with the government and are expected to testify against him.

Gosman’s Dock boasts sprawling restaurants and retail stores in addition to its wholesale business. For decades, it has been one of Long Island’s largest suppliers of fresh fish, and has been a mainstay in Montauk, even as the fishing-village soul of the town has been overshadowed by big-spending tourists in something of a Hamptonification. That could change soon: Gosman’s Dock is up for sale, priced at $45 million.

Read the full article at The New York Times

BOEM completes environmental review for Empire Wind; developers seek 54% more money for NY power

September 12, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced Sept. 11 that it has completed an environmental review of Empire Wind, two offshore wind projects being developed by partners Equinor and BP near the New York Harbor approaches.

BOEM’s announcement follows on news that Equinor and BP are seeking a major increase in their New York contract prices for the 2,076-megawatt Empire Wind I and II phases, plus their Beacon Wind project.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

NEW YORK: Foundations of South Fork wind farm off of Long Island now complete

August 10, 2023 — Installation of 13 foundations for the nation’s first major offshore wind farm is now complete off the coast of Long Island.

It’s named South Fork. It will be the first of five wind farms in the works. The project site is located roughly 35 miles east of Montauk.

Twelve wind turbines and a wind substation will be constructed at the site. Installation of the turbines is expected to begin later this summer and into the fall. Meanwhile, work continues at the site, including the installation of cables to connect the wind turbines to the offshore substation.

Read the full article at CBS News

Warmer waters are affecting fish and coral in Long Island Sound, experts say

August 7, 2023 — Warming waters are affecting a variety of marine life in Long Island Sound.

The sound is actually home to coral – the Northern Star Coral – and the species is helping New England scientists learn how warmer water linked to climate change might affect coral found in the tropics, too.

Shawn Grace, a marine ecologist and biology professor at southern Connecticut State University, is studying the long-term effects of Northern Star Coral that never went dormant last winter. He said temperatures were too high in Long Island Sound, so the coral stayed active.

“We brought some in just to check what they were feeding on. And yeah, they were actively feeding throughout the entire winter,” Grace told Connecticut Public’s “Where We Live.” “For me, this is the first winter that we’ve ever experienced this.”

Grace said there are thousands of colonies of corals to study – both in Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

Read the full article nhpr

Stalled coastal wind power projects imperil Biden’s climate agenda

July 26, 2023 — A grim financial outlook for the country’s offshore wind power industry is threatening President Joe Biden’s most important energy plans.

The administration is counting on offshore wind farms to produce at least enough power for 10 million American homes by the end of the decade.

Up and down the Northeast — the center of the burgeoning industry — however, energy companies have struggled to finance their projects, going hat in hand to governors and utility regulators asking for more money so they can start building the turbines they have already promised to deliver.

The energy developers’ requests have caused unrest in statehouses and among a public wary of already-rising power bills. But without a dramatic increase in offshore wind capacity, there is no way Biden or two of the nation’s greenest Democratic governors — New York’s Kathy Hochul and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy — can hope to meet their climate change goals.

“This is a pretty fragile time in the offshore wind industry,” said Molly Morris, president of Equinor Wind US, which is developing three projects to serve New York.

Read the full article at Politico

Modern Problems for the Ancient Horseshoe Crab

July 16, 2023 — The horseshoe crab starts its extraordinary annual migration to the East End not in Manhattan but on the continental shelf, in the dark, under hundreds of feet of water. Some ancient instinct, strengthened over nearly 500 million years of life on earth, tells it to begin, and over the course of months it edges closer to our shoreline, until the waters become shallow and the crab’s days slowly brighten.

On a full moon tide in May, its journey is complete, and along the bottom of our bays, hundreds pair off. The smaller male attaches to the larger female, who finds a suitable beach to lay her eggs. She buries herself five to 10 centimeters into the sand and deposits upward of 10,000 eggs before the male fertilizes them.

“She drags him around. He’s sort of along for the ride,” said Matt Sclafani, who works for the Cornell Cooperative Extension, and runs the horseshoe crab monitoring network in New York on behalf of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “The female pumps the water with her gills to help increase the fertilization success.” Satellite males, unattached to the female, also can externally fertilize some of the eggs.

Read the full article at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: First monopile foundation completed for New York offshore wind project

June 26, 2023 — Yesterday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that South Fork Wind, New York’s first offshore wind farm, has achieved its “steel in the water” milestone with the installation of the project’s first monopile foundation.

Later this summer, South Fork Wind will install the project’s U.S.-built offshore substation. The project remains on-track to become the first U.S. utility-scale offshore wind farm to be completed in federal waters. The goal of the project is to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035.

The announcement comes just two weeks after the completion of the first monopile foundation at Vineyard Wind 1, the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project.

The two projects will be staged out of the ports of New London, Conn., and New Bedford, Mass., using local labor and supply chain participants. Additional foundation components for South Fork Wind were fabricated in Providence, R.I. Advancement of the South Fork Wind project includes additional key U.S. milestones, as the project includes the first U.S.-built substation for offshore wind and will be serviced by the ECO Edison, the first U.S.-built service operation vessel for offshore wind.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

NEW YORK: NY offshore wind developers also seek price relief

June 8, 2023 — MAJOR OFFSHORE wind developers in New York say their projects may no longer be financially viable unless regulators amend their power purchase agreements to include adjustments for inflation and interconnection costs.

In petitions filed with state regulators on Wednesday, the New York wind farm operators followed the same script as developers in Massachusetts, who say their projects have been overwhelmed by inflation, rising interest rates, supply chain disruption, and the war in Ukraine.

The Massachusetts developers initially sought to modify their existing power purchase agreements, but when that plea fell on deaf ears at the Department of Public Utilities they moved to terminate the agreements they signed last year and rebid the projects at higher prices in a procurement coming in 2024.

In New York, the developers are asking state regulators to agree to price adjustments in the existing contracts. They point out that New York has approved including similar price adjustments as part of the state’s third offshore wind procurement process, and now should retroactively apply them to contracts approved in the first two procurements.

Read the full article at Common Wealth

NEW YORK: Trying to explain the whys of Long Island wind farms

June 5, 2023 — A group of experts attempted to explain to a large crowd at Long Beach’s City Hall last Wednesday the need for a plan by New York State to construct a wind farm off Long Island’s South Shore.

The plan has generated considerable controversy in Long Beach and Oceanside, over health issues generated by cables stretching from the wind turbines to the E.F. Barrett Power Plant in Island Park.

But the experts were not always successful.

The presentation was organized by the Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE) led by its executive director, Adrienne Esposito.

Topics included the basics of the Offshore Wind project, the dangers of electromagnetic fields (EMFs), how the project will affect marine life and the benefit for local labor and jobs.

Read the full article at LIHerald.com