Saving Seafood

Offshore wind industry could come to Gulf of Maine

March 15, 2019 — The offshore wind gold rush has largely blown past the Gulf of Maine.

Not anymore.

German utility EnBW just joined a lobbying and trade group, Clean Energy New Hampshire. Normally, such a minor corporate move goes unremarked. But this one represents an important milestone: EnBW becomes the first offshore wind developer to publicly show an interest in developing waters near the New Hampshire coastline.

Bill White, EnBW’s North American managing director, says his company is also eyeing the wind potential in waters off Maine and northern Massachusetts. EnBW competed in the federal government’s December auction for offshore wind leases south of Martha’s Vineyard, but was outbid.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Lawmakers take up threats to North Atlantic right whales

March 11, 2019 — The sound of an air horn echoed through a Congressional subcommittee hearing Thursday, set off by U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., to mimic what critically endangered North Atlantic right whales might experience during seismic testing for oil and gas.

The loud demonstration occurred at a hearing focused on permits that could soon be issued by the U.S. Department of Interior to five companies to explore oil and gas reserves off the mid- and southern Atlantic states. Critics of the move argue that the North Atlantic right whales, many of which visit Cape Cod Bay to feed, could be harmed in the process.

“We must reduce exposure of all whales but particularly females to stressors that can slow or stop reproduction,” said Scott Kraus, an expert witness with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, who appeared during a hearing before the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Offshore wind getting its sea legs in New Hampshire

March 8, 2019 — After years of advocacy and growing citizen engagement, New Hampshire’s clean energy industry finally has the wind at its back.

On Jan. 2, Governor Sununu sent a letter to the federal government requesting the establishment of a federal task force to coordinate federal, state and local government officials — along with relevant stakeholders — to determine possible locations for future offshore wind projects. Prior to that, New Hampshire had been the only New England state that hadn’t participated in exploring this rapidly developing clean energy industry.

The letter was directed to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), triggering the establishment of what is known as the BOEM Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force. According to BOEM material, “BOEM’s task forces serve as forums to coordinate planning, solicit feedback, educate about BOEM’s processes, permitting, and statutory requirements, and exchange scientific and other information.”

Prior to the request, New Hampshire would only have been able to develop offshore wind projects within three miles off the coast — the point at which state waters end and federal waters begin. This task force will investigate the potential for projects farther out into the ocean, thereby reducing the potential for visual impacts.

Read the full story at the New Hampshire Business Review

Fishing Report: Regional panels could assess wind farm impacts

March 8, 2019 — It’s very hard to get a handle on offshore wind. We have 20 or so lease areas from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, six of them (all granted to developers now) are off Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The kicker is that each of these lease areas will house multiple projects — projects that could harm or help habitat and fish in their area. However, the big question being asked by fishermen and scientists alike, is what cumulative impact they will they have on fish and habitat when they are all built, up and running?

For the past few months Vineyard Wind has been in negotiation with fishermen on a mitigation plan for one project… eventually many projects will be built on the East Coast. The permitting process and various stages of approval for any one wind farm is daunting, including hundreds of meetings, hearings, permits, negotiations, etc. Who knows what effect several projects in an area will have, developers have been just trying to get their project up and running.

Offshore wind farm developers are much like land developers. They acquire or lease a parcel and then develop it with ocean wind farms as they have the electricity sold. Much the same way that a land developer would develop a large parcel of land only building what they have good reason to believe they can sell in stages.

Last month during mitigation negotiations Rhode Island fishermen on the Fisheries Advisory Board (FAB) of the Coastal Resource Management Council (CRMC) approved a $16.7-million negotiated mitigation agreement with Vineyard Wind. The settlement provides funds for research to study safe effective fishing in the project area as well as research that may help future projects and their relationship to fishing. The agreement also includes $4.2 million in payments spread over 30 years for assistance with direct impacts of the wind farm on fishing in Rhode Island.

Read the full story at The Providence Journal

A Trump official said seismic air gun tests don’t hurt whales. So a congressman blasted him with an air horn.

March 8, 2019 — A hearing on the threat seismic testing poses to North Atlantic right whales was plodding along Thursday when, seemingly out of nowhere, Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) pulled out an air horn and politely asked if he could blast it.

Before that moment at a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing, Cunningham had listened to a Trump administration official testify, over and over, that firing commercial air guns under water every 10 seconds in search of oil and gas deposits over a period of months would have next to no effect on the endangered animals, which use echolocation to communicate, feed, mate and keep track of their babies. It’s why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave five companies permission to conduct tests that could harm the whales last year, said the official, Chris Oliver, an assistant administrator for fisheries.

As committee members engaged in a predictable debate along party lines — Republicans in support of testing and President Trump’s energy agenda, Democrats against it — Cunningham reached for the air horn, put his finger on the button and turned to Oliver.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket fisherman: ‘Nothing good’ about offshore wind farm

March 8, 2019 — The only part of Vineyard Wind’s proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket waters is an undersea cable running from the turbines 14 miles southwest of the island through the Muskeget Channel to Covell’s Beach in Centerville.

But fisherman Dan Pronk is worried that the impact the 84 turbines would have on the underwater ecosystem and the fishing industry is tremendous.

“There’s nothing good about it,” he said.

Pronk has fished for lobsters, crab, squid and other fish around the island for the past 33 years. Fourteen miles to the southwest, where Vineyard Wind has leased federal waters for its wind farm, he sets up strings of lobster traps running east to west, spaced a half-mile apart.

Pronk is a fixed-gear fisherman, meaning his equipment stays in the water, as opposed to mobile-gear fishermen, who trail their nets behind their boats to catch fish. Most of Pronk’s gear is set up around the Vineyard Wind site, where he usually finds a good number of lobsters, he said.

“There’s no question that the lobsters, the shellfish, they’re all going to leave,” he said about the repetitive noise from pile-driving 84 turbine anchors 160 feet into the sea floor. “It’s going to essentially be like setting off atomic bombs in the ocean.”

The only time there would not be any construction on the turbines or the cable would be from Jan. 1 to April 30, after Vineyard Wind, in an agreement with the National Wildlife Federation and the Conservation Law Foundation, agreed to halt operations in order to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale during its yearly migration from southern waters.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Offshore wind developers court recreational fishing community

March 8, 2019 — Offshore wind energy developers are courting recreational fishermen in the New York Bight, who could gain dozens of new fishing spots around turbine towers, but worry about impacts of the massive projects on traditional fishing grounds.

“Obviously the hot button for us is access,” said charter captain Paul Eidman of Anglers for Offshore Wind Power, a project of the National Wildlife Federation, which hosted the meeting in Toms River, N.J., on Wednesday along with the American Littoral Society for offshore wind companies and recreational fishermen.

“There’s a lot being proposed to go out in the ocean and on the bottom,” said Tim Dillingham of the littoral society, adding that the developing industry must avoid critical fish habitat and seafloor bumps and ridges that are important to anglers and the region’s big charter and party boat fleet.

There are conflicted feelings in the recreational community. Many anglers want to see the new hard structure that turbine construction would put into the water, swiftly attracting hydroid and shellfish growth that become the base for new fishing hotspots, much like artificial reefs.

Read the full story at Workboat

Maryland Attorney General Frosh joins 8 other state AGs in seeking halt to underwater seismic testing for oil

March 7, 2019 — Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh announced Wednesday that a coalition of nine states that joined a federal lawsuit to prevent underwater seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean is asking a judge to freeze the practice while the case proceeds.

The states in December joined a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in South Carolina by environmental groups seeking to reverse the authority that the National Marine Fisheries Service gave to five companies to conduct “seismic airgun surveys for oil and gas in coastal water” off the Atlantic Coast.

Now, the attorneys general are also supporting the request to halt that authorization as the case continues.

“The five authorizations allow nearly 850 combined days of around-the-clock activity, amounting to more than five million total seismic airgun blasts,” the original lawsuit states. “The authorized surveys will injure and disturb whales and dolphins hundreds of thousands of times, including critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.”

Read the full story at The Baltimore Sun

MASSACHUSETTS: Steering Committee Meeting SMAST Thursday March 14 at 2 pm

March 7, 2019 — The following was released by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth:

We would like to remind everyone of our Fishermen’s Steering Committee meeting on Thursday, March 14that 2:00 pm. The meeting will be held at SMAST East (836 South Rodney French Blvd, New Bedford, MA 02744) in Room 101/102, on the first floor.

The agenda for this meeting is:

(1) Funded 2019 RSA proposals

(2) Update on open codend work and the potential for a Georges Bank spring flatfish survey

(3) Recent developments in the planned windfarm areas

Please pass this announcement along to anyone that is not on the e-mail list that may be interested in attending. We welcome any additional suggestions for discussion, and as always, feel free to contact us with any questions.

N.J. fishermen and offshore wind firms learning to coexist

March 7, 2019 — Hunched over a laptop, Jeff Dement pointed to a virtual map showing lease areas for offshore wind off New Jersey’s coast.

He clicked on the legend and added a layer showing where scallop fishing overlaps with potential turbine locations.

“You could do this for days,” said Dement, fish tagging program director for the American Littoral Society, as he gave a tutorial of an online data portal published by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean.

A few anglers gathered behind him inside a conference room in the Ocean County Library, where offshore wind developers and fishers gathered Wednesday evening to discuss how the two groups can lessen proposed wind projects’ disturbance of wildlife.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City