Saving Seafood

Maine fishermen demonstrate against offshore wind plan

March 24, 2021 — From afar it looked like a flag-waving boat parade, but an offshore procession Sunday of fishing vessels off the mid-Maine coast was a protest against plans for an undersea power cable and offshore wind turbine.

Organized by captains on short notice, the demonstration involved more than 80 boats trailing the route of a proposed export cable from a floating turbine site south of Monhegan Island to South Boothbay.

The 12-megawatt project by New England Aqua Ventus and the University of Maine would be a demonstration project for the feasibility of floating turbine technology – which would be necessary for developing wind power in the deepwater Gulf of Maine.

Fishing advocates contend the developers need to be more transparent in planning, but protesters said there are immediate issues with gear conflicts.

“The boat hasn’t been staying in the survey route, and there’s been some issues with gear loss,” Dustin Delano, a Friendship lobsterman and and organizer, told the Portland Press Herald.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MAINE: Lobstermen Circle Survey Vessel As Wind Protests Escalate

March 24, 2021 — Protests over wind energy development off the coast of Maine changed course today. Several fishing boats reportedly circled a survey vessel off Monhegan Island, and federal and state law enforcement responded.

Lobsterman Larry Reed posted video on Facebook Monday morning of the Go Liberty, a 150-foot survey vessel, as it appeared to draw near lobster buoys in the water.

“He’s gonna tow right though that lobster gear with no concern. He’s got gear out towing, no concern whatsoever for our livelihoods,” Reed said in the video.

The U.S. Coast Guard says it sent boats from its Boothbay Harbor station to assist the state Marine Patrol on the scene, which is in state-administered waters. Company officials say the survey vessel was forced to stop operations to ensure safety. Fishermen say that Coast Guard and Marine Patrol boats monitored the situation, and by afternoon the vessel continued its work.

The flashpoint is a single-turbine, floating platform wind project under development by New England Aqua Ventus, in a collaboration between private industry and the University of Maine. The Go Liberty was contracted to survey potential routes for an electricity cable between the turbine and the coast.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Nearly $100 Million Proposed to Restore Gulf-wide Resources Impacted by Deepwater Horizon

March 23, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA and the Deepwater Horizon Regionwide Trustee Implementation Group is seeking public input on their first draft restoration plan (PDF, 346 pages). The group, exemplifying collaboration and coordination among the trustees, includes all four federal agencies and all five Gulf states restoring the environment after the 2010 oil spill. Wildlife and other natural resources affected by the spill often live and migrate across jurisdictional boundaries, which requires a region-wide approach to restoration. This approach also links projects across regional jurisdictions.

The plan proposes $99.6 million for 11 restoration projects across all five states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. It also targets specific locations in Mexico and on the Atlantic coast of Florida. Comments will be accepted through May 6, 2021 and the trustees are hosting two public webinars on April 15, 2021.

Proposed Project Alternatives

The draft restoration plan evaluates projects to restore natural resources injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It proposes a portfolio of projects restoring sea turtles, marine mammals, oysters, and birds. The 11 proposed projects include:

  • Four projects ($18.6 million) will restore sea turtles through projects focusing on nesting beaches, enhancing stranding and salvage networks, and collaborating with recreational and commercial fisheries to reduce bycatch and to gather information to inform potential future restoration projects
  • One of the sea turtle projects, the “Restore and Enhance Sea Turtle Nest Productivity” project, includes components located on key sea turtle nesting beaches on the Atlantic coast of Florida and in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico
  • Three projects ($7.2 million) will restore marine mammals through enhancing stranding and salvage networks and working with fisheries, including collaborating with shrimp fishing communities to reduce dolphin entanglements in gear, and hook-and-line fisheries to reduce dolphin injuries and deaths
  • One project ($35.8 million) will increase the resilience of and restore oyster reefs by linking brood reefs and sink reefs in each of the five Gulf of Mexico states
  • Two projects ($31 million) will restore birds through habitat restoration and nesting colony management
  • Additionally, one project ($7 million) will restore both sea turtles and birds through the removal of marine debris

The estimated combined cost of the proposed projects is $99.6 million. The broad geographic areas covered ensure restoration efforts are comprehensive and effective for the entire ecosystem. The proposed projects in the draft plan may also complement projects planned or underway in other restoration areas.

We appreciate the great response to our request for project ideas. We screened than 5,100 project ideas for consistency with priorities identified in the request and the Trustee Council’s Programmatic Restoration Plan.

Read the full release here

MAINE: 100 fishing boats gather off Monhegan in protest of offshore wind development

March 23, 2021 — Fishermen in nearly 100 boats from the midcoast gathered in waters near Monhegan Island on Sunday to protest the development of offshore wind energy infrastructure, including an array of wind turbines proposed by the state.

Boats came from towns including South Bristol, Boothbay, Port Clyde, Tenants Harbor, Vinalhaven, Friendship, Spruce Head, Monhegan and Owls Head, Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, told Mainebiz in a subsequent email.

The Brunswick association is an industry-based nonprofit that supports and advocates for Maine’s community-based fishermen. The protest was organized by the fishermen themselves, not by an industry association, he noted.

“We fully support their efforts,” he added.

Martens continued, “Fishermen and waterfront communities throughout Maine are increasingly concerned at the speed at which offshore wind development is taking place in Maine. Maine has funding to create a full roadmap to better ensure that our fisheries and fishing communities are respected and protected, yet we seem to be full steam ahead on putting 700-foot industrial structures out on the ocean.

“We need clean energy, but just because wind is renewable, doesn’t mean it’s green and it doesn’t mean it is the right choice for Maine.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

NEW JERSEY: Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Surveying Schedule – Spring/Summer 2021

March 23, 2021 — The following was released by Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind:

Geophysical
Fugro Enterprise | March 19, 2021
Fugro’s Enterprise (LOA: 52 m, Call Sign: WDD9388) vessel will conduct survey operations within the Atlantic Shores Lease Area and along potential Export Cable Corridors towards Atlantic City and Manasquan.

Geotechnical
Tidewater Regulus | April 15, 2021
The Tidewater Regulus (LOA: 82.6m, Call Sign: WDG8927) is a multiservice offshore support vessel that will mobilize to conduct geotechnical borings and seabed PCPTs for investigation of the Atlantic Shores lease area for soil characterization.

Alpine Shearwater | May 15, 2021
Alpine Shearwater (LOA: 33.5m, Call Sign: WDF5838) will mobilize to conduct geotechnical vibracores along the potential export cable routes for soil characterization.

Northstar Commander | June 1, 2021
The Northstar Commander (LOA: 73.2m, Call Sign: WDG5396) will mobilize to conduct seabed PCPTs along the potential export cable routes and in the lease area for soil characterization.

Laredo Brazos | June 14, 2021
The three-legged lift boat Laredo Brazos (LOA: 44.2m, Call Sign: WDG9589) will mobilize to perform geotechnical boreholes for the potential export cable route land fall areas.

Marine Survey Operations

For more information:

  • As our Fishing Liaison Officer, you will see Kevin around the docks. He is here to answer your questions and address concerns from fishermen of all sectors.
  • Please feel free to reach him at: 609.290.8577 or kevin.wark@atlanticshoreswind.com.

The Lease Area is located about 10 to 20 miles off the New Jersey coast, between Barnegat Light and Atlantic City in water depths ranging from 60 to 100 feet (10–17 fathoms).

The maneuverability of all survey vessels will be restricted. It is important that mariners maintain a safe distance of at least 2 kilometers (1.0 nautical miles) from each vessel.

Survey operations will be conducted 24/7, weather permitting. They are expected to conclude on or about August 2021, but may run longer as weather and operational conditions dictate. A Notice to Mariners will be issued prior to operations and vessels will monitor and broadcast on VHF Channel 16 during operations.

Wind developer accuses fishing boats of disrupting Maine offshore survey

March 23, 2021 — The seabed survey for a cable that would connect the planned offshore wind turbine near Monhegan Island to the mainland was disrupted Monday morning by three fishing boats that circled the survey vessel, according to New England Aqua Ventus, the project’s developer.

The action led the crew of the 144-foot R/V Go Liberty to suspend operations for an unspecified period, New England Aqua Ventus said.

“It was creating an unsafe situation until it’s resolved,” Dave Wilby, a project spokesman, told the Portland Press Herald.

The incident follows a protest Sunday by more than 80 lobster boats that lined up between Monhegan and Boothbay Harbor to call attention to their concerns about potential wind power development off the Maine coast.

Lobstermen fear that the ongoing survey project and the test turbine that would follow it will disrupt fisheries and undermine a traditional industry that is a vital economic engine for coastal Maine. But the project also is critical to Maine’s ambitions of jump-starting a new clean-energy sector.

After years of planning, a collaboration between the University of Maine and New England Aqua Ventus would link a turbine south of Monhegan to the mainland power grid in South Boothbay via a 23-mile underwater cable. The 12-megawatt test turbine would be the first commercial-scale project in the nation and help demonstrate the viability of floating offshore wind energy.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine lobstermen protest Monhegan-area wind project

March 22, 2021 — More than 80 lobster boats lined up between Monhegan Island and Boothbay Harbor on Sunday to protest a seabed survey for a planned offshore wind turbine near Monhegan.

Lobstermen fear that the ongoing survey project and the test turbine that would follow it will disrupt fisheries and undermine an industry that serves as a vital economic engine for coastal Maine. After years of planning, a collaboration between the University of Maine and New England Aqua Ventus would link a turbine south of Monhegan to the mainland power grid in South Boothbay via a 23-mile underwater cable.

Earlier this month, three vessels began surveying the seabed along that route to study the potential impact of a cable on the ecosystem and area industry. But lobstermen say the survey boats have already begun to disrupt their operations by cutting lines and disturbing buoys.

“The boat hasn’t been staying in the survey route, and there’s been some issues with gear loss,” Dustin Delano, a lobsterman from Friendship who helped organize the protest, said this weekend.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NEW JERSEY: 1,500 Wind Turbines. 2,700 Square Miles. Offshore Wind in the Atlantic Will Be Big. Really Big

March 22, 2021 — Off the coast of New Jersey these days, surveillance vessels hired by European energy companies are taking measurements of the ocean depths, and underwater research drones are analyzing water temperatures to accumulate data on the Mid-Atlantic “Cold Pool.”

Onshore in places like the Port of Paulsboro along the Delaware River south of Camden and Philadelphia, labor unions, port officials and politicians are angling for new marine terminals to build and ship off massive steel monopiles.

And in weekly board meetings, state-appointed officials in charge of the Garden State’s public utilities are discussing massive overhauls to the power grid and many miles of new transmission lines.

Billions of dollars will be invested in the next several years — at sea and on land — to erect hundreds of wind turbines miles from the coast in order to bring New Jersey 7,500 megawatts of renewable energy. That’s enough to power half of the state’s 1.5 million homes.

Politicians, environmentalists and European companies have invested interest in the plans. Big issues still to confront include lucrative North Atlantic fishing concerns; ecological effects on what is known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight’s “Cold Pool”; and the fundamental remaking of power grids that bring the electricity into homes and businesses of 100 million Americans.

Every year off the coast of the eastern United States, from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, forms a unique oceanographic feature called “the Cold Pool.”

It’s a layering of water temperatures that makes for breathtakingly cold water near the ocean floor and much warmer water near the surface and beaches. The effect is called stratification, and it is created each spring, peaks each summer and mixes up once again each fall.

The stark difference in water temperature during the late spring and summer months makes it one of Earth’s unique marine ecosystems. It gives the continental shelf off the northeastern United States a diversity of fauna that has persisted for centuries. Fishermen and scientists alike credit the Cold Pool with powering the renowned fisheries of New England, New Jersey and Maryland.

No one knows the extent to which thousands of wind turbines would have on the stratification process, or if the twirling horizon-scrapers will affect the Cold Pool at all.

Read the full story at NBC Philadelphia

British diplomat looks to advance offshore wind collaboration on virtual Maine visit

March 17, 2021 — The British diplomat covering New England met with Gov. Janet Mills on Tuesday to discuss energy issues, including the offshore wind turbines that are integral to Maine’s long-term climate goals.

The meeting is part of a week-long virtual trade mission that Peter Abbott, the British consul general to New England, is making in Maine as a follow-up to an agreement the United Kingdom and Maine signed in December to advance clean energy to meet respective climate goals. It is the only agreement like it between the U.K. and an American state.

Abbott’s virtual visit comes as Mills looks to offshore wind as a significant opportunity for economic recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession and as his own country, now separate from the European Union, tries to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Study finds significant liver damage in Gulf of Mexico red snapper

March 17, 2021 — A study completed by researchers from the University of South Florida has revealed almost every red snapper studied in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill showed signs of liver damage.

Red snapper is the latest Gulf species studied by researchers at the USF College of Marine Science in the wake of the devastating 2010 oil spill. Erin Pulster, a USF researcher and lead author of the study, said the results give “early warning signs of a compromised ecosystem.” Pulster and her team recently had their findings published in Aquatic Toxicology.

Read the full story at Seafood Source