Saving Seafood

Biden targets big offshore wind power expansion to fight climate change

March 30, 2021 — The Biden administration on Monday unveiled a goal to expand the nation’s fledgling offshore wind energy industry in the coming decade by opening new areas to development, accelerating permits, and boosting public financing for projects.

The plan is part of President Joe Biden’s broader effort to eliminate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change, an agenda that Republicans argue could bring economic ruin but which Democrats say can create jobs while protecting the environment.

The blueprint for offshore wind power generation comes after the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leasing auctions on federal lands and waters, widely seen as a first step to fulfilling the president’s campaign promise of a permanent ban on new federal drilling to counter global warming.

The United States, with just two small offshore wind facilities, has lagged European nations in developing the renewable energy technology. The administration of Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump had vowed to launch offshore wind as a promising new domestic industry but failed to permit any projects.

Read the full story at Reuters

Biden to Push Offshore Wind Projects

March 29, 2021 — The Biden administration plans to give wind-power developers access to more of the Atlantic Coast and start a slate of new environmental reviews in an attempt to jump-start the country’s offshore wind business.

White House officials said Monday they want to fast-track leasing in federal waters off the New York and New Jersey coasts, a priority for wind-power interests and state officials.

Much of the concern centers on how wind turbines might affect shipping, whale migrations and commercial fisheries.

The New York Bight is among the country’s three most prolific areas for scallops, said David Frulla, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, a group including most of the country’s Atlantic Ocean scallop boats.

More turbines will make it harder for large fishing boats to navigate by disrupting the radar they depend on at night, Mr. Frulla said.

“We’re concerned that there’s such a momentum for offshore wind that the fishing industry is going to end up as collateral damage,” Mr. Frulla said.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

Biden administration launches major push to expand offshore wind power

March 29, 2021 — The White House on Monday detailed an ambitious plan to expand wind farms along the East Coast and jump-start the country’s nascent offshore wind industry, saying it hoped to trigger a massive clean-energy effort in the fight against climate change.

The plan would generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade — enough to power more than 10 million American homes and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. To accomplish that, the Biden administration said, it would speed permitting for projects off the East Coast, invest in research and development, provide low-interest loans to industry and fund changes to U.S. ports.

Fishing operators also have raised concerns about the impact of wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean, an area critical to the seafood industry.

David Frulla, a partner at the firm Kelley, Drye and Warren who represents the trade association for the Atlantic scallop fishery, said in an interview that his clients have warned federal officials for years about the risks posed by offshore wind development plans.

For example, the southeast tip of an area the administration has identified in the New York Bight called Hudson North intersects with a scallop fishing spot, he said. The eastern perimeter of a second area, Hudson South, is just at the edge of an important area for scallops, Frulla said. Altogether, the scallop catch in the New York Bight is worth tens of millions of dollars, he said.

“We were saying, ‘Don’t roll the dice,” Frulla said. “They rolled the dice.”

The group Frulla represents, the Fisheries Survival Fund, has a case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that challenges a decision by the Obama administration to auction offshore leases in the region without doing a lengthy environmental analysis in advance. In that instance, federal officials said they did not have to conduct a full analysis until a company has proposed a construction and operations plan.

By delaying the analysis by several years, Frulla said, the government made it almost impossible to block the project. “Essentially it’s a foregone conclusion,” he said. “There’s so much investment.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Biden Administration Announces a Major Offshore Wind Plan

March 29, 2021 — The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain a foothold in the United States.

The plan sets a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. To help meet that target, the administration said it would accelerate permitting of projects off the Atlantic Coast and prepare to open up waters near New York and New Jersey for development. The administration also plans to offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrading the nation’s ports to support wind construction.

The moves come as President Biden prepares a roughly $3 trillion economic recovery package that will focus heavily on infrastructure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials made a similar case on Monday, saying offshore wind deployment would create 44,000 new jobs directly in the offshore wind sector, such as building and installing turbines, as well as 33,000 new indirect jobs.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Maine officials seek to lower temperature of wind power protests

March 26, 2021 — With accusations flying between midcoast Maine lobstermen and offshore wind power advocates, state officials worked to reduce tensions as survey vessels chart a future cable route for a planned wind turbine site south of Monhegan Island.

The Maine Aqua Ventus project would be a 12-megawatt floating turbine to test the feasibility of using such anchored generators to build commercial-scale wind power arrays in the deepwater Gulf of Maine. The survey now is over a 23-mile route where an export cable would carry electricity to landfall and tie into the mainland power grid at South Boothbay.

In a bulletin to fishermen Wednesday morning, state Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher urged continued restraint in protests, after a peaceful demonstration Sunday by more than 80 vessels that cruised the cable route flying banners of protest.

“The purpose of this seabed survey is to map the seafloor in order to determine if the cable bringing power to shore can be buried. The purpose of burying the cable is to allow both mobile and fixed gear to fish around the cable without a problem,” Keliher wrote. “The developer has committed to working with the Department to ensure that fishing will be allowed around and over the cable route. I hope that we can find a way forward to complete this survey and achieve that goal.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MAINE: The Intense, Lobster-Fueled Fight Over America’s First Floating Wind Farm

March 25, 2021 — There’s a rumble brewing out in the ocean, and it could forecast some troubles ahead for renewable energy. It involves some of Maine’s small fishermen, a high-profile wind project in the state, and an aggressive showdown with a research vessel earlier this week.

Erik Waterman is a fourth-generation fisherman in South Thomaston, Maine who has been fishing in the area for more than 30 years. (His daughter also fishes, he said in a Facebook direct message, and his grandmother was an independent lobsterwoman. “I’m pretty proud,” he said). He said that word of Sunday’s protest, which he joined on his fishing boat and emphasized was “peaceful,” spread by word-of-mouth through local fishing communities. By his count, between 80 and 90 boats participated.

The boat that the lobstermen surrounded on Monday was actually conducting a seabed survey for the cable, completing some of the research needed to determine the impacts of the Aqua Ventus project. For his part, Waterman—who sent over a picture of him and his daughter with a 460-pound (209-kilogram) bluefin tuna he said they caught in the area where the wind turbine would be installed—said he is afraid of what the installation of this one turbine could mean for the rest of the ocean where he fishes.

“We fear for our livelihood because if this single turbine gets a foothold, it will most definitely snowball up and down our pristine coast,” Waterman said. “Our way of life providing seafood for the world will be forever altered.”

While a lobsterman’s salary is on the modest end, it’s still a coveted profession in Maine, where some wait decades for a chance to get a commercial lobster fishing license with the state. Maine lobstermen have enjoyed a healthy harvest over the past decade, with record-high sales and demand for their product accompanied with high levels of catch, which some scientists say is attributable to warming waters in the Gulf of Maine. But as the waters keep warming, some studies project that lobster populations could decline as much as 60% by 2050.

But even a huge deployment of offshore wind all along the East Coast would only take up a tiny portion of the ocean, NREL noted, meaning “fishing would continue normally in most ocean areas.” Experts have said that it appears that offshore wind turbines in Europe may actually have beneficial effects on some species of fish (fish may like the artificial reefs that moored turbines provide). There’s still comparatively little research, however, on the specific impacts offshore wind could have on fisheries. That’s particularly true around U.S. shores, which is simply because there are so few offshore wind farms, said Miriam Goldstein, the director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress.

“A lot of [the research] comes from Europe, so it’s not completely analogous,” she said. “And the reason for that is that Europe has a lot of wind farms, and the U.S. has two.”

However, Goldstein pointed out that there is a large body of research how fish and other ocean life have responded to another type of structure that’s been in US waters for decades: oil rigs. And from that research, it appears that the impact is mixed.

“Putting a bunch of hard structures in the ocean is good for things that like it and not good for things that don’t,” Goldstein said, noting that some oil rigs have become coveted spots to fish red snapper.

Read the full story at Gizmodo

MAINE: As tensions rise, fishermen are frustrated with offshore wind development survey

March 25, 2021 — Fishermen are denying allegations that they intentionally blocked a vessel conducting a survey for an offshore wind development project from doing its work earlier this week.

The survey vessel, Go Liberty, reported to marine law enforcement Monday that fishermen were blocking its path, preventing the ship from conducting a survey of a proposed cable path for the New England Aqua Ventus project, a one-turbine wind development project slated for the waters off Monhegan.

Maine Marine Patrol responded to the complaint but did not observe fishing boats blocking the vessel’s path, according to a Department of Marine Resources spokesperson.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Maine wants lobstermen to move gear from wind power cable survey route

March 24, 2021 — Acting on direction from Gov. Janet Mills, Maine’s marine resources commissioner on Wednesday asked captains who fish along a planned wind turbine cable survey route to voluntarily haul their gear, or he would have to tell the Marine Patrol to move it out of the way.

In a notice addressed to “Lobster harvesters who fish in or near the Monhegan survey route,” Pat Keliher sympathized with fishermen upset about the prospects of floating offshore wind  projects coming to the Gulf of Maine. And he told them that a gear count done over the past day by the Marine Patrol found far fewer buoys in the survey path than a survey vessel had reported.

But there’s still too much gear inside the route for the survey vessel to do its work, Keliher said, noting that it was in everyone’s interest to complete the survey to determine if  the cable can be buried. He asked fishermen to cooperate and remove any remaining gear for the next two weeks.

“The developer has committed to working with the department to ensure that fishing will be allowed around and over the cable route,” Keliher wrote to the lobstermen. “I hope that we can find a way forward to complete this survey and achieve that goal.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Marine Patrol Directed To Remove Gear From Path Of Wind Power Survey If Fishermen Won’t

March 24, 2021 — The state is telling Monhegan Island-area lobstermen to remove fishing gear from the path of a survey vessel — or the Marine Patrol will. That’s after the Department of Marine Resources determined that there is enough gear in that area to prevent the vessel from doing its work.

The 150-foot Go Liberty is surveying possible routes for an electricity cable that would stretch from a planned floating wind turbine developed by New England Aqua Ventus to the mainland. Earlier this week, lobstermen protested the effort at sea, and in some cases sailed near the survey ship.

In text and email messages sent to lobstermen Wednesday morning, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher says he has been directed to ask the state Marine Patrol to move gear away from the route if the vessel is unable to continue its work. He also says DMR is working with the vessel to make sure it keeps its operations within a defined pathway.

Keliher and other officials in Gov. Janet Mills’ administration did not immediately return requests for comment.

Read the full story at Maine Public

MAINE: Fishermen didn’t violate rules in dispute with wind developers, state says

March 24, 2021 — State marine regulators are providing an update on a dispute between fishermen and the developers of a wind energy project off Monhegan Island.

The flashpoint has been recent activity by a 150-foot vessel contracted by the developers, New England Aqua Ventus, to survey possible routes for a cable running between the project and the mainland.

Project officials said Monday that fishermen appeared to be putting gear in the vessel’s way, bringing their boats too close, and thus forcing survey operations to be suspended. The Department of Marine Resources said Tuesday that when marine patrol officials radioed to fishing boat captains that they needed to stay a safe distance from the survey vessel, the captains complied.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News