Saving Seafood

Seafood workers, supporters rally at Fulton market against Empire Wind

July 16, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative hosted a July 15 rally at its Hunts Point facility in the Bronx to protest the Empire Wind energy project, now under construction around traditional fishing grounds off New York.

“Offshore wind is not a supplement to our industry, it is a direct replacement,” Nicole Ackerina, CEO of the Fulton cooperative, said in a joint statement after the rally with union workers, commercial fishermen from New York and New Jersey, and coastal advocates.

“These projects will eliminate access to vital fishing grounds, destabilize our seafood infrastructure, and trade American jobs for short-term foreign-backed construction contracts.”

Fulton employs 1,200 full-time workers, including 500 Bronx residents, most of them union members, said Ackerina.

“Our industry feeds America. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported that in 2022, New York’s seafood industry supported nearly 70,000 jobs and over $9.2 billion in sales. New Jersey supported more than 72,000 jobs and $12.9 billion in sales. This is not expendable.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEW YORK: NYC fishermen beg Trump to rethink offshore windfarm that could devastate marine life

July 16, 2025 — Commercial fishing workers pleaded with President Trump to again maroon a wind project off the Long Island shore – arguing Tuesday the green energy initiative could throw the industry into disarray.

Business and environmental organizations gathered at the Fulton Fish Market Cooperative in the Bronx early Tuesday to emphasize the devastating effects the Empire Wind One project could have on fishermen’s jobs and marine life.

The Trump administration temporarily paused the project in April while it was already under construction, launching a review of the permits issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration. The stop was lifted a month later.

Read the full article at The New York Post

NEW YORK: Long Island fishermen fight to stop offshore wind farm

July 16, 2025 — The head of the Fulton Fish Market Cooperative rallied alongside local fishermen and joined a decade-long fight to stop an offshore wind farm now under construction off Long Island’s coast.

Construction on the wind project began in April and was soon halted by a Trump Administration stop-work order. That order was lifted in May, and the project continues despite the ongoing lawsuit from the fishing industry.

Read the full article at Pix 11

Fulton Fish Market joins lawsuit against Empire Wind

July 11, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative in New York, the nation’s largest seafood market, has signed onto a federal lawsuit brought by commercial fishermen and coastal activists opposing Equinor’s ongoing Empire Wind offshore energy project.

Operators of the Fulton market, including 23 member companies that move more than 5 million tons of seafood through their Bronx location weekly, are the newest plaintiffs in an amended complaint filed July 4 with the U.S. District Court for New Jersey.

With the Trump administration allowing Equinor to proceed with construction, it’s clear “that this administration is aware offshore wind is nothing but a greenwashing shell game that will industrialize our oceans and kill longstanding American port communities and economies,” Fulton CEO Nicole Ackerina said in a joint statement July 9 with other plaintiffs.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Businesses, environmentalists join forces to stop NY offshore wind project they fear will harm fishing, sea life

July 9, 2025 — They’re in uncharted waters.

In a rare move, businesses and environmentalists have joined forces in court to furiously fight New York’s Empire Wind One offshore project, saying that it will devastate both the commercial fishing industry and marine life in local waters.

“A decade ago, we said it would affect fishermen, fisheries, and guess what? The state didn’t care,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

“We are collateral damage — even though we feed people.”

The decade-long planned energy initiative, which began construction last April off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, faces a growing lawsuit from stakeholders in the tri-state area.

The Bronx’s massive Fulton Fish Market Cooperative, which employs around 1,200, and Nassau County’s Point Lookout Fishing Club, and the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association are some of the groups joining a legal action brought by environmentalists in the area.

Read the full article at The New York Post

 

Offshore Wind Projects Continue to Add to U.S.-Flagged Fleet

July 2, 2025 — The next offshore service operation vessel (SOV), ECO Liberty, was christened to officially enter the U.S. fleet in support of the offshore wind sector. The vessel, which was completed in May, has been in jeopardy after the Trump administration suspended work on the Empire Wind project, but with work back underway, the vessel was named in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 28 by Louisiana’s First Lady Sharon Landry.

The 262-foot (80-meter) hybrid-powered ECO Liberty will be homeported at New York’s South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where more than 2,000 workers are constructing the staging facility, O&M base, and control center for Empire Wind. The ECO Liberty will be deployed to support ongoing marine construction in the lease area and eventually serve as the floating home for Empire Wind’s skilled workers when stationed offshore.

The vessel is 5,700 GT. It provides accommodations for up to 60 workers and is designed to remain offshore at the site to support the construction and later maintenance operations.

The vessel was built by Edison Chouset Offshore, which continues to own the vessel through its offshore division. It will be operating on a long-term charter to Empire Wind, which is being developed by Equinor. Empire Wind is located 15 to 30 miles southeast of New York’s Long Island and spans 80,000 acres, with water depths of between approximately 75 and 135 feet. Offshore work started this spring for the project, which will have a capacity for 810 MW when completed.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

To maintain NY, NJ port traffic, feds seek new ocean site for 50 million cubic yards of dirt

July 1, 2025 — The feds are trying to figure out where to put 50 million cubic yards of ocean floor dirt.

By federal law, the shipping lanes of New York and New Jersey Harbor must be deep enough for large cargo ships. To maintain a depth of around 50 feet, the harbor requires constant dredging from the ocean floor. That dirt is dumped in an 18-square-mile patch of ocean nearly nine miles south of the Rockaways.

But that stretch of submerged landfill is nearly at capacity. And now, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking for a new site to dump the dirt — and it’s a surprisingly complex task.

The EPA produced maps showing where the dredged material could be dropped. The sites had to be within 40 miles of the harbor to be economically feasible. The site also had to be deeper than 75 feet, meaning more than five miles from shore. Navigation channels and anchorage areas were off limits, as well as locations designated for wind farms or submerged cables.

Fishing holes, however, were not off limits. The three proposed dumping areas are places where commercial fishers harvest scallops, herring, clams and squid.

“Obviously more material that goes out and is put on new sites becomes problematic for us because it’s basically fishing ground that historically we’ve been able to fish that we will now lose,” said  Scot Mackey, an official with the Garden State Seafood Association. “We are concerned about all of the structure that is going out there and impacting our fishing grounds.”

Read the full article at The Gothamist 

Commercial fishers, conservation groups sue to block Empire Wind offshore energy development

June 16, 2025 –A coalition of commercial fishers, conservation groups, seafood processors, and a local mayor has filed an emergency motion seeking to block the development of Empire Wind, an offshore wind project planned off the coast of the U.S. state of New York.

In their suit, the groups claim that the wind energy operations will cause substantial harm to the commercial fishing sector while threatening endangered whales and damaging the seafloor.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Opponents seek injunction to halt Empire Wind

June 13, 2025 — Commercial fishermen and opponents of the Empire Wind project asked a federal court to immediately halt pile driving and construction activity, weeks after the Trump administration allowed construction to resume.

The coalition, which filed a lawsuit June 3 in U.S. District Court, returned to ask for a preliminary injunction June 12, according to the group Protect Our Coast New Jersey.

Energy company Equinor would build an array of 54 turbines on its 80,000-acre federal lease near the approaches to New York Harbor. The plan dates back to December 2016 when Equinor (then known as Statoil) first won a lease sale by the federal Bureau of Ocean energy Management.

Commercial fishing advocates have long opposed wind projects in the area, citing nearby fishing grounds like the Mud Hole and Cholera Bank with historic mixed trawl fisheries, and sea scallops, the Mid-Atlantic’s most valuable fishery.

Protect Our Coast New Jersey contends the renewed construction poses “imminent, irreversible harm to marine life, fishing grounds, the seafood supply chain, and coastal economies.”

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Fishing Group Renews Effort to Stop Empire Wind

June 13, 2025 — The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association is among the groups calling for a renewed halt to the construction of the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind farm, which was the subject of a stop-work order in April that was lifted just a month later.

The organizations, which include Protect Our Coast-New Jersey and the Nantucket-based ACK for Whales, have called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to issue a stop-work order on the 54-turbine, 810-megawatt project, which is to span 80,000 acres in the New York Bight and send renewable electricity to New York City. Mr. Burgum had done just that on April 16, reportedly at the urging of Representatives Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and with the support of Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

A month later, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management informed Equinor, the Norwegian company that is constructing the wind farm, that the stop-work order had been lifted, allowing construction to resume. Gov. Kathy Hochul took credit for the reversal, saying that she had “spent weeks pushing the federal government to rescind the stop-work order” so that construction on “this important source of renewable power” could proceed.

The groups seeking to halt the project cited the June 2 death of a subcontractor aboard a platform supply vessel.

“Unlike [the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s] public reporting for oil and gas accidents, there is currently no centralized public reporting website for offshore wind fatalities or injuries,” the groups said in a statement. “The public, press, and fishing community were never informed of this fatality, echoing the lack of transparency seen after the Vineyard Wind LM107P blade implosion on July 13, 2024, when 55 tons of material were deposited into the ocean and washed onto Nantucket’s beaches, only disclosed 48 hours later.”

Read the full article at The East Hampton Star