Saving Seafood

Whales navigate a perilous route off the NJ Shore

January 23, 2023 — At any given time, 50 or more vessels, ranging from massive cargo ships to small fishing boats, are motoring off New Jersey’s 127-mile coast from New York to Delaware.

The smaller vessels often travel at just a few knots per hour, while larger ones run to 20 knots (23 mph) or more.

Little wonder whales sometimes crash into one of them, receiving what amounts to giant-sized headaches or fatal blows.

Two whales that died in January and were stranded in Atlantic City and Brigantine showed evidence of blunt force trauma associated with vessel collisions. Opponents of  have suggested survey vessels are to blame, but officials suggest otherwise.

Walt Nadolny, a professor emeritus at SUNY Maritime College in New York, has been teaching students for two decades how to avoid whale strikes before they head to sea as merchant mariners.

“The odds are ridiculously low” that the whales struck a slow-going survey vessel, said Nadolny, who has no affiliation with an offshore wind company.

Orsted, a global offshore wind company that started in Denmark, is set to build New Jersey’s first wind farm but has not started construction. In January, it has had one vessel at a time on the water totaling little more than seven days.

Nadonly surmises that it’s highly unlikely an offshore wind surveying vessel, which normally would travel at 8 to 10 knots (9-11 mph), could cause a fatal blow to a whale. Rather, he said, fatal collisions typically occur with bigger ships traveling at least 18 knots (21 mph) or more. Usually only large commercial ships travel that fast.

For example, on Friday morning the Maersk Pittsburgh container ship with a gross tonnage of 74,642 was traveling off the coast of Long Beach Island from New York City to Charleston at almost 21 knots (24 mph), according to tracking provided on marinetraffic.com. Multiple other container ships were traveling at similar speeds.

Many of those fast ships, Nadolny noted, often come from, or are headed to, the busy ports of New York/New Jersey or the Delaware Bay toward Philadelphia. The ships are required to reduce speed only as they near the ports, but they often follow voluntary speed restrictions farther out.

Read the full article at phys.org

NEW YORK: Hundreds of undersized lobsters found in New York City supermarkets

January 23, 2023 — Authorities in the U.S. state of New York have discovered hundreds of undersized lobsters for sale in several New York City supermarkets.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Division of Law Enforcement conducted an inspection of an unidentified supermarket in the borough of Queens on 24 December, 2022, and found 128 undersized live lobsters for sale. On 26 December, 245 undersized lobsters were found for sale at a market in the borough of Brooklyn. Both supermarkets were issued violation notices, according to a DEC press release, with each violation coming with a fine of between USD 400 and USD 600 (EUR 368 and EUR 552). The lobsters were confiscated and donated to a food pantry in New York City.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Summer heat waves and low oxygen prove deadly for bay scallops as a New York fishery collapses

January 20, 2023 — A new study by Stony Brook University researchers published in Global Change Biology demonstrates that warming waters and heat waves have contributed to the loss of an economically and culturally important fishery, the production of bay scallops. As climate change intensifies, heat waves are becoming more and more common across the globe. In the face of such repeated events, animals will acclimate, migrate, or perish.

Since 2019, consecutive summer mass die-offs of bay scallops in the Peconic Estuary on Long Island, New York, have led to the collapse of the bay scallop fishery in New York and the declaration of a federal fishery disaster, with landings down more than 99 percent.

This study led by Stony Brook School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences graduate Stephen Tomasetti, Ph.D., and Stony Brook University Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation Christopher Gobler, Ph.D., and a collaborative team of researchers reveals that extreme summer temperatures, becoming more frequent under climate change, exacerbate the vulnerability of bay scallops to environmental stress and has played a role in the recurrent population crashes.

Read the full article at phys.org

Survey Work Begins for Offshore Wind Farms in NY Bight

January 13, 2023 — Less than a year after the record-setting auctions for leases in the New York Bight, initial survey work is beginning for the U.S.’s next large offshore wind farms. Coinciding with the start of the offshore survey work, however, a group of environmentalists is calling for a suspension of the efforts after whales recently beached on the New Jersey shoreline.

Community Offshore Wind, a joint venture between RWE Renewables and National Grid, which won one of the leases in the middle of the area off the New Jersey shore reported that it would be kicking off its survey work. The company highlighted the depth of its efforts to coordinate with the local fishing community to limit disruptions with the survey which will be continuing through summer 2023 with two vessels from Furgo. Community Offshore Wind said it has collaborated with Fugro on the project phasing to accelerate the overall development process.

The geophysical survey campaign will study seabed conditions within the project lease area and potential export cable corridors in the New York Bight. According to Community Wind, the data collected will help inform the project design and engineering, identifying potential geohazards and obstructions, as well as benthic habitats and archaeological resources.

“The start of the site survey is an important milestone for the project,” said Doug Perkins, President and Project Director of Community Offshore Wind. “The technical data collected will help us develop a more responsible and cost-effective project design.  Our success relies on communication, safety, and collaboration with other parties out on the water.”

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

BOEM Releases Draft Environmental Statements for Next Two Wind Farms

December 15, 2022 — Progress continues to be made on the development of several of the first large-scale offshore wind projects in the United States. On December 16, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will publish the draft Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) for two projects, Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Wind and Sunrise Wind being jointly developed by Ørsted and Eversource, as one of the final steps in the permitting process.

The release of the two EIS statements begins a 60-day comment period. BOEM will use the findings to inform its decision on whether to approve the Construction and Operating Plan (COP) submitted by each of the developers. BOEM will also determine which mitigation measures it would require at each of the sites. As part of the process, BOEM will be conducting virtual public meetings to hear comments on the plans.

“This important federal permitting milestone puts Sunrise Wind one significant step closer to advancing New York’s ambitious climate goals. As we review the draft findings we want to thank the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for its comprehensive and diligent review,” Sunrise said in a statement in response to the news of the release of its EIS.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

 

Wind Farm Update From Orsted on a Blustery Beach

December 10, 2022 — Is that Poseidon’s triton reaching from the littoral shallows, or are you just trying to build a 132-megawatt wind farm?

The South Fork Wind project site at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott certainly gives pause, if not a shudder of megalophobia. Three intimidatingly large steel pilings jut into the sky just off the beach, while nearby, drills continue with the jarringly loud work of drilling a horizontal tunnel from a cable tie-in near the Long Island Rail Road line to the north to the workers’ barge just offshore, temporarily anchored by the pilings.

Troy Patton, head of program execution, Americas, for Orsted, which is building the wind project via a 50-50 partnership with Eversource, was on the scene last week to give an update on the project, which will see the installation, 35 miles to the east off Montauk, of a dozen 11-megawatt wind turbines. The turbines will tie in by an undersea cable, to the land-ho connection point in Wainscott.

It’s a windy Thursday afternoon, but not as windy as the day before. “We like the wind,” Mr. Patton said as he updated reporters on what has happened to date.

Read the full article at the East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Scallops keep dying in Long Island’s Peconic Bay, harming the local fishing community

November 15, 2022 — Usually during November, veteran scalloper Chris Tehan would be on the Peconics — his boat dredging for the prized mollusk living in the pair of bays squeezed between Long Island’s North Fork and South Fork.

But in 2022, Tehan is hardly finding any because the Peconic scallop population is crashing. Scientists blame the climate crisis, but they’re also hopeful the marine animal could be saved before the fishing community goes bust.

This year represents the fourth in a row of record die-offs for Peconic Bay scallops. Their population density has dropped more than 90% since 2018, according to new survey data from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County that is yet to be published.

“We monitor 21 different sites. And in total, we found only 19 adult scallops in those 21 surveys,” said Harrison Tobi, an aquaculture specialist who helped lead the study. Recent counts have been so low that the federal government issued a disaster declaration in 2021 promising federal relief to the fishery.

Tobi said climate change-induced warmer waters are causing better conditions for a parasite that harms the scallops and impedes their reproduction. He added that Peconic scallops are essential to the bay’s ecosystem, given their position in the food web and their ability to filter algae and bacteria from the water.

Read the full article at the Gothamist

Leading Light Wind picks fisheries liaison team for New York Bight project

October 22, 2022 — Developers of the Leading Light Wind offshore energy project in the New York Bight said Tuesday that they have brought on a new fisheries stakeholder engagement team from Sea Risk Solutions LLC.

Sarah Hudak has joined as fisheries liaison officer, supported by Ron Larsen, managing partner of Sea Risk Solutions, a maritime and fisheries communication consultant. Sea Risk is a maritime risk mitigation and liaison services company that started in 2013 working on subsea cable protection, and now is involved in offshore wind planning.

Leading Light released its new “fisheries communication plan,” a detailed document on how it will work with commercial and recreational fishermen, fisheries managers and others during planning, construction and operations.

Leading Light Wind is a led by project sponsors Invenergy and New York-based energyRe. Planned as a 2,000-plus megawatt capacity at 90 turbine locations, the 84,000-acre federal lease site 40 miles east of Atlantic City, N.J., and 80 miles south of Long Island would be tied into the New York metro energy grid by a 190 kilometer export cable, according to the company.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Claws out! Maine lobster listed as seafood to ‘avoid,’ angering restaurateurs

September 7, 2022 — This is not the way to butter up the people of Maine.

The claws are out in the New England state after an environmental group put the region’s renowned lobsters on a list of seafood to “avoid” because their harvest is allegedly putting whales in danger.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s environment-focused seafood watch program’s decision to “red-list” the tasty crustacean left state officials steaming mad.

“This is an outrageous act with very real-world consequences, and no real scientific evidence,” US Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) fumed to The Post. “It’s infuriating.”

Industry reps and restaurateurs — including owners of beloved lobster roll joints in the Big Apple and the Hamptons — also said the list can go to shell.

Read the full article at the New York Post