Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: New England Is Not Prepared For The World’s Largest Offshore Windfarm

May 2, 2019 –Commercial fishing families, as stewards of the ocean, are concerned that a new industry is developing at a rapid pace without adequate science and risk management. By the end of the year, Vineyard Wind intends to begin construction on its 84-turbine offshore wind farm south of Cape Cod. It will be one of the largest wind farms in the world and it will be built on essential marine habitat.

By the end 2025, Vineyard Wind and other foreign-owned wind energy companies, plan to build over 1,000 turbines in a 1,400 square mile lease area. Combined, they will dwarf other wind farms around the world. And they will build it without adequate scientific understanding of the harm they could cause to the migratory route for millions of marine animals, the feeding grounds for right whales, and the traditional fishing grounds of thousands of fishermen and recreational boaters.

Read the full release here

Sound and fury: Trump administration pushes forward on seismic mapping in Atlantic

May 2, 2019 — The Trump administration is pressing ahead with processing permits that would allow companies to search for oil and gas deposits using potentially harmful seismic blasts in the Atlantic Ocean, despite its decision to delay an unprecedented plan to sell federal leases on nearly the entire U.S. outer continental shelf.

Seven geology companies are vying for permits at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, to map the ocean floor from New Jersey to Florida using seismic sound waves that, according to some scientists, harm fish and marine mammals, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale that relies on echo location to find food and mates and to keep in touch with its rare offspring.

Bureau officials confirmed this week that permits are being considered regardless of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s decision to shelve its five-year leasing plan in federal waters on the outer continental shelf. The decision followed a ruling in March by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason that President Trump’s revocation of an Obama administration ban on oil and gas industry drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal. Only Congress can undo the ban, the judge said.

Seismic mapping is also being challenged in court by conservation groups and state attorneys general along the Eastern Seaboard. A federal judge in South Carolina is considering an injunction request against any work moving forward until the case is decided. Oil and gas leases and seismic mapping are also opposed by Democratic and Republican governors along the coast, along with congressional and state lawmakers.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

NEFMC Hosts Offshore Wind Session; Discusses EBFM, eVTRs, RSA Program

April 30, 2019 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council met April 16-18, 2019 in Mystic, CT and capped off its meeting with a Special Session on Offshore Wind in the Northeast Region. The session was organized and hosted by the Council to give Council members and stakeholders the opportunity to learn more about:

  • The total scope of planned offshore wind energy development in the region with emphasis on projects off New England and New York;
  • The players involved and their roles in the process with an emphasis on NOAA Fisheries consultations with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM);
  • Research and monitoring issues, including current federal, state, and developer-funded efforts, implications for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s fishery independent surveys, and regional coordination initiatives through the newly formed Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA); and
  • Updates on the timing and status of specific Northeast Region projects.

Read the full release here

Gov. Cuomo signs New York offshore drilling ban alongside Billy Joel

April 30, 2019 — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by musician Billy Joel, a Long Island native, signed legislation Monday at Jones Beach banning offshore drilling in New York’s waters, a move that supporters believe will thwart the Trump administration’s hopes to open the Eastern Seaboard for oil and gas exploration.

The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach) and Assemb. Steven Englebright (D-Setauket) and approved by the State Legislature in February,  will prohibit state agencies from processing applications for pipelines or any other transportation and distribution services needed to facilitate offshore drilling.

“Today’s bill says no how, no way are you going to drill the coast off Long Island and New York,” Cuomo said at an event with elected officials from both counties at the Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh. “It’s not going to happen as long as we are in charge of this state.”

The Interior Department announced in January 2018 that it intended to hold 47 lease sales in more than two dozen planning areas, nine of them along the Eastern Seaboard, between 2019 and 2024. The other tracts are in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Alaska and off the West Coast. The department granted an exclusion prohibiting drilling off the shores of Florida, citing that state’s reliance on tourism.

Read the full story at Newsday

Feds seek to get S.C. claims tossed in seismic testing suit

April 25, 2019 — As cross-arguments continue between the many parties in a federal lawsuit seeking to block seismic testing off coastal waters of East Coast states, three more municipalities in the Carolinas will get their voices heard, while the federal government tries to get some of South Carolina’s specific claims tossed.

Conservation groups, including Georgia’s One Hundred Miles, filed the suit in December in order to stop the seismic testing that is the precursor to offshore oil and gas drilling. The federal government already awarded five companies permits for incidental harassment of marine mammals that would occur during seismic testing.

The federal defendants — the National Marine Fisheries Services, NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — argue in a Monday filing that South Carolina “states four novel and legally baseless theories raised by no other party in this suit.”

Those claims, according to the federal attorneys, are that 2017 orders by the president and the Commerce secretary were invalid because “they retract putative policies” from the Obama administration, that they seismic testing is a public nuisance, that any survey activities would constitute trespassing and that the survey activities violate admiralty law.

Read the full story at The Brunswick News

NOAA scientist: Offshore wind projects will likely affect viability of fishery surveys

April 19, 2019 — Upcoming offshore wind projects proposed for areas on the East Coast of the United States will have an impact on NOAA Fisheries surveys, presenting new challenges to scientists by potentially resulting in less-effective fisheries data.

At a special session of the New England Fisheries Management Council covering offshore wind, Wendy Gabriel, of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, outlined a wide number of concerns for the organization regarding the development of wind power along the coast. Chief among the concerns was the organization’s ability to continue conducting viable fishery surveys – which provide much of the data that the council uses to establish fishing quotas.

“The bottom-line here is, nearly all of the long-term fishery independent surveys that have coverage will be affected,” she said during the session.

There’s already a wide number of potential offshore wind projects planned for the east coast, with multiple leased areas totaling thousands of acres of land dotting the coast. Almost all of those planned areas overlap some of the survey “strata” which NOAA Fisheries uses to plan its surveys.

Typically, according to Gabriel, the center will randomly select areas of each survey “stratum” to determine where trawls will be preformed to get data on certain fisheries – from Atlantic sea scallops to surf clams. However, currently, leased areas overlap in every single strata area; at the lowest end, 30 percent of each strata is occupied by an offshore wind lease.

“Right now, we use a random stratified survey design, and that involves picking locations at random in a stratum, and now we’re not going to be able to do that, because there will be turbines in the neighborhood,” Gabriel said.

That could pose a problem, depending on how spaced out the wind turbines are, and what sort of uses are allowed in the wind energy areas.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Report finds ‘alarming unaddressed deficiencies’ in US offshore oil drilling

April 18, 2019 — Even as the Trump administration has taken steps to expand offshore oil drilling, a new report shows that thousands of oil spills are still happening and that workers in the oil and gas industry are still dying on the job.

The report comes from Oceana, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the oceans, which has sued the federal government to stop seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. The blasting is the first step needed to allow offshore drilling, when seismic airguns are used to find oil and gas deep under the ocean. Every state along the Atlantic coast has opposed the blasting, worried that spills could hurt tourism and local fisheries. Some scientists say the testing could also hurt marine life, including the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale. The group tied its report, released Thursday, to the ninth anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to show what has been happening since the government promised to hold the industry accountable to higher safety standards.

Read the full story at CNN

Power of science: Alliance will call for fisheries-focused wind power research

April 11, 2019 — As wind energy initiatives blow across the bows of commercial fishing fleets on both U.S. coasts, stakeholders have noted the dearth of data on the effects of wind power in federal waters. Enter ROSA, the Responsible Offshore Science Alliance, which launched this week to fill the need for a collaborative regional science body to address fisheries and wind development. ROSA’s goal is to advance regional research and monitoring of fisheries and offshore wind interactions in federal waters.

“So much is poorly understood regarding the impacts of large-scale offshore wind energy development to fisheries and fish stocks, and studies that have been performed lack regional coordination,” says Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which launched the new alliance. “This forum will be immensely helpful to the fishing industry so that it may provide leadership in study prioritization, methodology and execution through cooperative research.”

ROSA will bring together representatives of the maritime trades, offshore wind power developers, NMFS and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. RODA aims to create forums for dialogue on behalf of the fishing industry and is pushing to make sure fishermen are involved with the new organization as it begins to gain traction.

“America’s offshore wind energy future is dependent on scientists, fishermen and energy officials uniting under a common goal: safeguarding our invaluable marine resources,” said NMFS Director Chris Oliver, in support of the alliance. “NOAA Fisheries is pleased to be a part of this scientific endeavor to ensure our fisheries and fishing communities continue to thrive.”

ROSA’s initial focus will be on offshore wind development and fisheries from
the Gulf of Maine to North Carolina, but will be structured to address issues in other regions as wind power development expands in the United States.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Hilcorp delays Cook Inlet seismic work

April 11, 2019 — Hilcorp will delay a planned seismic survey in Lower Cook Inlet this summer until after the peak of the summer season.

The Houston-based company had planned to conduct a 3-D seismic survey in federal waters off Homer, where it holds leases on 14 federal oil and gas lease tracts. The seismic survey would have covered eight of the lease blocks, according to a survey plan the company submitted to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

However, a number of snags held up the process. The company says the delay is in part due to holdups during the lengthy partial federal government shutdown, which spanned the new year and lasted more than a month.

Hilcorp also says it will delay its planned work until after the height of the fishing and tourist season. Those two industries are primary drivers of the economy in Homer and the surrounding area. Homer attracts tourists from all over the world each summer, many of whom come to fish for the region’s famously abundant Pacific halibut. A large commercial fleet based in Homer and the surrounding communities also fishes for halibut between March and November and for Pacific salmon during the summer season.

Hilcorp external affairs manager Lori Nelson did not give a precise date when the company plans to take up the seismic work again, but that the company understands that “the waters of Lower Cook Inlet are a shared resource.”

“We are actively engaged in discussions with our contractor to delay the survey,” she said in an email. “Our commitment to keep the community’s interests and concerns at the forefront will continue as we work to revise our schedule and work plan.”

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

NEFMC April 16-18, 2019, Mystic, CT, Listen Live, View Documents

April 9, 2019 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council will hold a three-day meeting from Tuesday, April 16 through Thursday, April 18, 2019. The public is invited to listen-in via webinar or telephone. Here are the details.

MEETING LOCATION: Hilton Hotel, 20 Coogan Boulevard, Mystic, CT 06355; Hilton Mystic.

START TIME: The webinar will be activated at 8:00 a.m. each day. However, please note that the meeting is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday and 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. The webinar will end at approximately 6:00 p.m. EST or shortly after the Council adjourns each day.

WEBINAR REGISTRATION: Online access to the meeting is available at Listen Live. There is no charge to access the meeting through this webinar.

CALL-IN OPTION: To listen by telephone, dial +1 (415) 655-0052. The access code is 470-718-207. Please be aware that if you dial in, your regular phone charges will apply.

AGENDA: The agenda and all meeting materials are available on the Council’s website at April 16-18, 2019 NEFMC Mystic, CT. Additional documents will be posted as they become available.

EBFM: The Council’s Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management (EBFM) Committee will meet Monday, April 15, 2019 at the Radisson Airport Hotel in Warwick, RI to conduct business that will be discussed on Wednesday, April 17 during the full New England Council meeting in Mystic. More information will be available shortly at EBFM Committee, April 15 meeting.

SPECIAL SESSION – OFFSHORE WIND: The Council has organized a special session titled “Offshore Wind in the Northeast Region” that will begin at roughly 9 a.m. on Thursday, April 18. The purpose of the session is to better inform Council members and stakeholders about regional offshore wind development activities and the wide range of issues involved. The session will cover four primary subject areas:

  • The total scope of planned offshore wind energy development in the region with emphasis on projects off New England and New York;
  • The players involved and their roles in the process with emphasis on NOAA Fisheries consultations with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM);
  • Research and monitoring issues, including current efforts, implications for fishery independent surveys, and regional coordination initiatives; and
  • Updates on the timing and status of specific projects with an opportunity for developers to share pertinent information.

THREE MEETING OUTLOOK: A copy of the New England Council’s Three Meeting Outlook is available HERE.

COUNCIL MEETING QUESTIONS: Anyone with questions prior to or during the Council meeting should contact Janice Plante at (607) 592-4817, jplante@nefmc.org.