Saving Seafood

Offshore wind project completes final step, ready to deliver renewable energy to Virginians

October 15, 2020 — Dominion Energy announced Wednesday that the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot project has completed the final stage of testing and is ready to enter commercial service providing clean, renewable energy to Virginians.

“This is a monumental day for the Commonwealth and the burgeoning offshore wind industry in America as CVOW is ready to deliver clean, renewable energy to our Virginia customers,” said Joshua Bennett, Dominion Energy vice president of offshore wind.

“Our team has worked diligently with key stakeholders and regulators while safely navigating through the coronavirus pandemic to complete this vitally important project that is a key step to reducing carbon emissions,” Bennett continued.

The next step for the two turbine, 12-megawatt project is submitting final documentation to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to complete its technical review — which is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Read the full story at WAVY

New Tools Available to Help the Public to Better Understand Fishing Impacts Associated with Offshore Wind Development

October 15, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has developed new tools and analyses that will help the public better understand fishing impacts associated with offshore wind development.

To help analyze how fishing operations may be impacted by offshore wind energy projects, NOAA Fisheries combined vessel logbook and dealer report data from 2008-2018 compared to current offshore wind energy project areas. We identified where and when fishing occurred relative to these areas and estimated landings and fishing revenue associated with each project area.

Based on this process, NOAA Fisheries developed reports of potential socioeconomic impacts from each offshore wind project area based on historic data.  These reports include information on the amount of primary species landed, revenue associated with landings, gear types used, and communities affected by each offshore wind development project area.  This will help estimate the potential impacts of such development on managed fisheries and associated fishing communities.

The public can access and download data used to generate these reports using a web-based tool developed by NOAA Fisheries. This tool allows users to access summary data based on species, gear, port, and state.  Users can also conduct a customized query by filtering the data for several fields, including year, wind energy area, species, or fishery management plan.

Both the socioeconomic impact reports and data query tool are now available online.  All data included in reports or available through the new web-based query tool have been aggregated, as necessary, to protect data confidentiality.

Read the full release here

Deep-Seabed Mining Lastingly Disrupts the Seafloor Food Web

October 15, 2020 — Especially the microbial part of the carbon cycle is affected.

Deep-seabed mining is considered a way to address the increasing need of rare metals. However, the environmental impacts are considered to be substantial but remain largely unknown and clear regulatory standards are lacking. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, together with colleagues from The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and the UK, now describe that mining-related disturbances have a long-term impact on carbon flow and the microbial loop at the deep seafloor. They present their results in the journal Progress in Oceanography.

The deep sea is far away and hard to envision. If imagined it seems like a cold and hostile place. However, this remote habitat is directly connected to our lives, as it forms an important part of the global carbon cycle. Also, the deep seafloor is, in many places, covered with polymetallic nodules and crusts that arouse economic interest. There is a lack of clear standards to regulate their mining and set binding thresholds for the impact on the organisms living in affected areas.

An international team of scientists around Tanja Stratmann from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, and Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and Daniëlle de Jonge from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, has investigated the food web of the deep seafloor to see how it is affected by disturbances such as those caused by mining activities.

For this, the scientists travelled to the so-called DISCOL area in the tropical East Pacific, about 3000 kilometers off the coast of Peru. Back in 1989, German researchers had simulated mining-related disturbances in this manganese nodule field, 4000 meters under the surface of the ocean, by ploughing a 3.5 km wide area of seabed with a plough-harrow. “Even 26 years after the disturbance, the plough tracks are still there,” Stratmann described the site. Previous studies had shown that microbial abundance and density had undergone lasting changes in this area. “Now we wanted to find out what that meant for carbon cycling and the food web of this deep ocean habitat.”

Read the full story at Environment Coastal & Offshore

Mid-Atlantic Seismic Blasts Halted

October 14, 2020 — Oil and gas drilling companies are standing down from seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean this year, to the relief of environmental groups and wildlife advocates in the Chesapeake Bay region.

The industry said in a status conference before the U.S. District Court in South Carolina that it will not move ahead with testing for oil and gas reserves this year. The current seismic blasting authorizations expire November 30, and renewing them would require another round of environmental review and public comment.

Bay Bulletin first reported two years ago the federal approval for five companies to do seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, as a first step to gas and oil offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Dana Rebeiro hired as community liaison by Vineyard Wind

October 14, 2020 — Vineyard Wind announced the hiring of former New Bedford City Councilor Dana Rebeiro as Community Liaison with a particular focus on New Bedford, the South Coast and Cape, according to a news release from Vineyard Wind.

Her hiring comes at a time when the company is gearing up to bring both clean, renewable energy and job opportunities to the area, the release said.

“We’re pleased to bring Dana on board at this critical juncture for our first project,” said Chief Development Officer Rachel Pachter in the news release. “Vineyard Wind 1 is going to need a well-trained and diverse workforce to meet the needs of this growing industry as well as frequent opportunities to engage with the company. Dana’s experience will be a tremendous asset as we work to ensure that local communities receive the greatest possible benefit when it comes to jobs and other opportunities and are well informed as the project moves forward.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishing industry group casts doubt on offshore wind’s job creation promises

October 12, 2020 — While offshore wind developers are promising tens of thousands of U.S. jobs from wind farm development along the East Coast over the next decade, the commercial fishing industry is sowing doubt about the projections.

An economic analysis commissioned by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a fishing industry coalition, concludes that “a surprisingly low” number of new positions will be permanent, and that the bulk of jobs will be created overseas.

“The claim that the huge investments on offshore wind would provide significant job and economic benefits in the U.S. has been grossly inflated,” wrote the report’s author, Janet Liang, an economist with Georgetown Economic Services, a consulting firm.

Wind industry representatives are not convinced by the findings, however. So long as Eastern Seaboard states can provide sufficient training to help businesses and workers capitalize on wind industry opportunities, the economic benefit is bound to be substantial, said Liz Burdock, chief executive and president of the Business Network for Offshore Wind.

Read the full story at the Energy News Network

Federal government allowing permits for seismic blasting in Atlantic Ocean to expire

October 12, 2020 — All manner of marine life, from plankton to the largest of whales, will be spared from months of nonstop thunderous seismic blasts that could kill or harm them because the oil and gas explorers and the federal government are allowing their permits to expire on Nov. 30 — and it would take at least a year for them to obtain new ones — should they wish to, environmentalists say.

“If you had told me two years ago 2020 would begin and end without any seismic air gun testing I would have been elated; that’s why I’m elated now,” Steve Mashuda, the Seattle-based managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice, said by telephone.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit is one of several environmental nonprofits that in December 2018 sued in a South Carolina federal court to stop the tests — twice as loud as a jet engine — sought from New Jersey’s Cape May to Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Though New York and New England were not included, the blasts are so powerful they travel thousands of miles. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and a number of other East Coast local, state and federal officials opposed them — the first step in the Trump administration’s initial plan to open the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas firms.

Read the full story at Newsday

Judge’s ruling likely ends seismic testing off coast for years

October 9, 2020 — Seismic testing off the coast of South Carolina is likely finished for several years after a federal judge dismissed a 2018 lawsuit on Tuesday.

The suit, filed by the Coastal Conservation League, took aim at the National Marine Fisheries Service for issuing preliminary seismic testing permits off the state’s coast.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel dismissed the suit because there are currently no pending applications for either of the two permits needed to proceed with seismic testing, and a Nov. 30 application deadline for one, coupled with a lengthy approval process, means any approvals would be moot by the time a trial occurred, Gergel said.

Read the full story at the Charleston Regional Business Journal

Deep-seabed mining lastingly disrupts the seafloor food web

October 9, 2020 — The deep sea is far away and hard to envision. If imagined, it seems like a cold and hostile place. However, this remote habitat is directly connected to our lives, as it forms an important part of the global carbon cycle. Also, the deep seafloor is, in many places, covered with polymetallic nodules and crusts that arouse economic interest. There is a lack of clear standards to regulate their mining and set binding thresholds for the impact on the organisms living in affected areas.

Mining can reduce microbial carbon cycling, while animals are less affected

An international team of scientists around Tanja Stratmann from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, and Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and Daniëlle de Jonge from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, has investigated the food web of the  to see how it is affected by disturbances such as those caused by  activities.

For this, the scientists traveled to the so-called DISCOL area in the tropical East Pacific, about 3000 kilometers off the coast of Peru. Back in 1989, German researchers had simulated mining-related disturbances in this manganese nodule field, 4000 meters under the surface of the ocean, by plowing a 3.5 km wide area of seabed with a plow-harrow. “Even 26 years after the disturbance, the plow tracks are still there”, Stratmann described the site. Previous studies had shown that microbial abundance and density had undergone lasting changes in this area. “Now we wanted to find out what that meant for carbon cycling and the food web of this deep ocean habitat.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org