Saving Seafood

NEW YORK: Peconic Bay 2025 scallop harvest remains poor

November 4, 2025 — The 2025 scallop season got off to a rough start in Peconic Bay on Monday, and the prospect of a bountiful haul is not looking good for the fifth straight year.

Charlie Manwaring, owner of the popular Southold Fish Market, said he has about 30 to 40 bushels right now and expects a few more later this week, but doesn’t expect a good year.

“The season sucks. Period. There’s not a lot. It is what it is,” Mr. Manwaring told The Suffolk Times. “We will have some scallops tomorrow. For a couple days, we’re probably going to have some scallops for sale, but it’s probably going to be hit or miss.”

Bay scallops can be harvested from the first Monday in November to March 31. According to the state regulations, they must be 2-1/4 inch length from mid-hinge to mid-bill and display an annual growth ring.

Read the full article at The Suffolk Times

NY fishermen say horseshoe crab management is working

October 14, 2025 — Some ideas sound noble in theory but collapse under the weight of the facts. That’s the case with New York State Assembly Bill 4997 and Senate Bill 4289, legislation that would ban the harvest and sale of horseshoe crabs by New York’s licensed commercial fishermen

Proponents call it “protection.” In reality, it’s an unnecessary ban that would wipe out livelihoods, damage sustainable local fisheries, and ignore the very science-based efforts that state and federal regulators have built together.

Gov. Kathy Hochul understood that last year when she vetoed the same bill. At a time when some were pushing hard for an outright ban, she stood instead with science, with regulators, and with the men and women who make their living on the water. For that, New York’s fishing families are deeply grateful, and hopeful that she will again make the tough but right decision.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEW YORK: No ship? New York offshore wind project faces yet another hurdle

October 13, 2025 —  The first wind farm slated to plug into New York City’s grid has already endured one political catastrophe this year. Now, a logistical crisis looms on the horizon.

Equinor’s Empire Wind is a 810-megawatt project being built about 20 miles off the shore of Long Island, promising enough energy to power 500,000 homes once completed in 2027. The Trump administration halted construction in April, but allowed it to resume in May. The latest challenge came on Thursday with the unexpected cancellation of a contract for the massive new wind-turbine installation vessel that Equinor had been planning to use on the project next year.

Two shipbuilding companies broke out into a public skirmish — one unexpectedly cancelling a contract and the other threatening legal action — over the construction of the specialized ship. The fate of the vessel, which is already more than 98% complete and floating in Singapore’s waters, is now uncertain.

The cancelled $475 million agreement leaves Equinor scrambling to figure out how to maintain progress and bring Empire Wind online on schedule.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Rising vessel traffic fuels humpback mortalities in New York waters

October 3, 2025 –Escalating vessel flow in New York waters has coincided with an alarming spike in humpback whale mortalities, underscoring a mounting hazard.

The waterways surrounding New York City are extraordinarily crowded. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is the largest container port on the East Coast and the third largest in the United States, accounting for 13.5% of the country’s market share. In 2024, it handled nearly 9 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), a sharp climb from under 5.8 million a decade earlier. Just a few months ago, in May, the joint-venture port district was the nation’s most occupied cargo gateway.

A 2024 study headed by Lesley Thorne, the dean of research at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, pointed to post-pandemic shifts in trade routes favoring the East to the West Coast and new transits along coastal routes adjacent to PANYNJ as the driving factors behind this surge.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Studies find “troubling decline” of horseshoe crabs in Long Island Sound

September 18, 2025 — Researchers at Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S.A.-based The Maritime Aquarium claim new studies show a “troubling decline” in the horseshoe crab population within Long Island Sound.

“Horseshoe crabs are a cornerstone of estuarine ecosystems, and their decline is alarming in its own right but also has cascading consequences for other animals and ecological processes,” Maritime Aquarium Vice President of Conservation Sarah Crosby said in a release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW YORK: East Hampton To Use Offshore Wind Fund to Offset Federal Shortfalls for Montauk Inlet Dredging

September 16, 2025 — East Hampton’s windfall from the South Fork Wind Farm is being used by the town to commence a much-needed federal dredging of the inlet to Lake Montauk, the biggest commercial fishing port in New York State.

According to East Hampton Town, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ bids to perform the long-planned Lake Montauk Harbor Navigation Improvement Project this fall came in $1.1 million higher than expected, and the agency informed the town it would need $1.1 million by Sept. 10 in order to go forward with the dredging, which can only be done between Oct. 15 and Jan. 15.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez announced Monday that the town has allocated $1.1 million from its Host Community Agreement, which in 2022 allowed South Fork Wind to place its transmission cables from its offshore wind farm under town roads in exchange for $28.9 million over the following 25 years.

The money, she said in a statement, would “fill a federal funding gap and ensure the dredging of Montauk Inlet moves forward, after Washington fell short on delivering the full commitment.”

Read the full article at East End Beacon

Murphy, other Democratic governors call on Trump to uphold wind permits

September 2, 2025 — Democratic governors are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s plans to halt offshore wind developments.

“We are looking for the Trump Administration to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted and allow these projects to be constructed,” said a statement issued Monday by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Trump has a deep, long-running dislike of wind farms he’s derided as ugly, bird-killing monstrosities. But his administration has moved more aggressively in recent weeks to restrict their construction, including by blocking projects from obtaining rural development business loans, halting construction of a nearly completed Ørsted A/S venture near Rhode Island and moving to invalidate the permit for another planned project off the Maryland coast.

Read the full article at Bloomberg News

With Little Explanation, Trump Throws Wind Industry Into Chaos

August 26, 2025 — When the Trump administration ordered that construction stop last week at Revolution Wind, a giant wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was nearly finished, it alluded vaguely to national security concerns but did not offer any further explanation.

It’s becoming a striking pattern.

The order was the third time the Trump administration had revoked permits or halted work on wind farms that had already received federal approval while offering little legal justification for doing so, following actions against wind projects in New York and Idaho. Legal experts say that there is little basis for blocking projects that have already received permits.

The Trump administration has signaled in a court filing that it next plans to rescind federal approvals for yet another wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which had not yet begun construction but would consist of up to 114 wind turbines off the coast of Ocean City, Md. The filing was first reported by WBOC.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Hurricane Erin churns up dangerous waves and closes beaches along US East Coast

August 19, 2025 — Hurricane Erin churned slowly toward the eastern U.S. on Tuesday, stirring up treacherous waves that already have led to dozens of water rescues and shut down beaches along the coast in the midst of summer’s last hurrah.

While forecasters remain confident the center of the monster storm will remain far offshore, the outer edges are likely to bring damaging tropical-force winds, large swells and life-threatening rip currents into Friday.

Warnings about rip currents have been posted from Florida to the New England coast, and the biggest swells along the East Coast are expected over the coming two days. Rough ocean conditions already have been seen along the coast — at least 60 swimmers were rescued from rip currents Monday at Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina.

New York City closed its beaches to swimming on Wednesday and Thursday, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered three state beaches on Long Island to prohibit swimming through Thursday. Several New Jersey beaches also will be off-limits.

Read the full article at the Associated Press