Saving Seafood

New Jersey: Wind Resistance

April 8, 2023 –Rich Baehrle, resplendent in a red, white and blue American flag button-down shirt, sported a black baseball cap emblazoned with the defiant Revolutionary War dictum: “Don’t tread on me.”

As he stood before a large crowd at the Ocean City Tabernacle, the real estate broker from Northfield poured out his grievances, delivered in a rapid, brusque manner through a thick Southern accent.

“I am against it! I’m not calling for a moratorium,” he thundered in the church building as if raging against sin, raising his hands while drawing loud applause. “It’s our coast! It’s our New Jersey! And we need to stop it now!”

It was not a religious service. Baehrle was railing at the wind.

In a raucous public meeting in March when residents and elected officials came out by the hundreds to declare their unwavering opposition to the proposed installation of hundreds of wind turbines off the Jersey Shore, Baehrle might have been preaching to the choir.

It was not just about ruining their ocean views. Some in the hall theorized the offshore platforms would haphazardly set off pacemakers. Others believed it was a national security risk, would brainwash children into the fruits of green energy, incur millions in future decommissioning costs and single-handedly dismantle local tourism. One speaker asserted, without substantiation, that the electricity from the wind turbines would all go to New York.

Further enflaming it all were the whales.

At least 31 whales and 25 dolphins have floated ashore up and down the East Coast since December and have become part of the fight, despite evidence that many of the marine mammals were most likely hit-and-run victims of increasingly larger cargo ships. And despite there being no wind farms in the ocean off the coast of Jersey just yet. In fact, there are only 7 wind turbines along the entire Eastern seaboard right now, off the coast of Block Island in Rhode Island and Virginia.\

Read the full article at NJ.com

NEW JERSEY: ‘Tell us why’: Monmouth Commissioners call for investigation into surge of whale deaths

April 8, 2023 — Monmouth County officials stood in the mist at Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park on Wednesday, where they gathered to call for an immediate stop to offshore wind energy work off New Jersey’s coast.

Their announcement marked a new addition to a growing group of elected officials who are demanding answers on recent deaths among whales and dolphins across the region, and who allege offshore wind survey work is the cause.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 10 whale deaths had been recorded along the Jersey Shore since Dec. 1. In addition, two separate pods of dolphins had stranded since early February on New Jersey beaches. Another three individual dead dolphins and one porpoise had washed ashore in separate strandings.

Read the full article at Daily Record

MAINE: Legislators hear about Mills administration offshore wind plans

April 6, 2023 — Representatives of the Governor’s Energy Office took questions from a legislative committee Wednesday about the scale of offshore wind projects that might be sited in the Gulf of Maine, and their potential impacts on whales, fisheries, and aesthetics.

Celina Cunningham of the Governor’s Energy Office says a network of floating wind turbines 20 miles offshore would require miles of cable buried 6 feet under the ocean floor. Cunningham expects that wind projects would eventually be interconnected with those elsewhere in New England.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Turbine Construction Approved for First Large US Offshore Wind Farm

April 6, 2023 — The U.S. Department of the Interior has completed the necessary reviews clearing the way for the start of turbine construction offshore between Rhode Island and New York for South Fork Wind. This will be the first commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project to start turbine construction in federal waters in the United States.

The development is being called a major milestone towards meeting the U.S.’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. It is also the first since the DOI in January moved to streamline processes by shifting responsibilities, including workplace safety and environmental compliance, from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

NEW JERSEY: NJ officials push again for wind energy stoppage

April 6, 2023 — There has to be something that’s contributing to a rash of marine mammal strandings along the New Jersey coastline, officials say. So, what is it?

County, state, and federal officials gathered in Long Branch on Wednesday to call for a pause of offshore wind activity, so that a comprehensive — and unbiased — investigation can be conducted into whether the going-green effort is contributing to the deaths of dozens of dolphins and several whales on New Jersey and New York beaches.

“It’s a simple equation — just stop, investigate, and tell us why,” Monmouth County Commissioner Thomas Arnone told a crowd at Seven Presidents Oceanfront Park.

For months, activists and officials have been pushing a not-yet-proven theory that preparation work to get wind turbines along the East Coast is interfering with the normal way of life for marine mammals, resulting in their death.

Environmentalists and New Jersey mayors have sent letters to President Joe Biden and Gov. Phil Murphy, asking for a halt to wind energy progress offshore, at least until it can be proven that acoustic surveys and other activity aren’t directly causing deadly harm to marine life. A moratorium has also been the focus of legislation on the federal level.

Read the full article at New Jersey 101.5

OREGON: Fishery council calls to rescind Oregon offshore wind areas

April 6, 2023 — The Pacific Fishery Management Council is asking federal regulators to rescind two “call areas” off the southern Oregon coast that have been identified for potential offshore wind energy development.

Council members voted 10-0 on March 9 to recommend scrapping both areas over worries that massive floating wind farms will burden commercial and tribal fishermen.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, established the areas last year — including one that covers 1,364 square miles of ocean near Coos Bay, and another spanning 448 square miles near Brookings.

Read the full article at Capital Press

NOAA: NJ wind farm may ‘adversely affect,’ not kill whales

April 6, 2023 — New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm may “adversely affect” whales and other marine mammals, but its construction, operation and eventual dismantling will not seriously harm or kill them, a federal scientific agency said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report Tuesday evaluating an analysis by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of the Ocean Wind I project to be built off the southern New Jersey coast.

NOAA’s final biological opinion examined BOEM’s research, and took into account “the best scientific and commercial data available.”

NOAA determined the project by Danish wind power company Orsted “is likely to adversely affect, but is not likely to jeopardize, the continued existence of any species” of endangered whales, sea turtles and other animals. Nor is it likely to “destroy or adversely modify any designated critical habitat.”

Read the full article at Associated Press 

Massive study examines offshore wind’s impact on fishing, fisheries

April 5, 2023 — A just released “first of its kind” report that federal regulators and the fishing industry spent three years working on is making the rounds, exploring the impacts of offshore wind on fisheries and commercial fishermen, and identifying the questions that remain unanswered.

They just released their results in a nearly 400-page “Synthesis of Science” report — a collaborative effort between the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the lead regulator of offshore wind; NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center; and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a membership-based coalition of the fishing industry.

“I would say this [report] is the first of its kind,” said Fiona Hogan, one of the principal investigators and the research director for RODA. “It was kind of amazing … that we were able to get state and federal employees, academics, even from over in Europe … and the fishing industry directly working together to write this document.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

The Jones Act: How a 100-year-old law complicates offshore wind projects

April 4, 2023 — There’s a lot riding on the nascent offshore wind industry. Companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars. The Biden administration wants 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade. It could mean billions of investment in new manufacturing capacity. Offshore wind is being billed as a key part of a clean energy future for the United States.

Offshore wind farms are massive projects, with up to 100 or more wind turbines standing hundreds of feet above the ocean. They take decades to plan and get approved. As this industry has worked to get off the ground in the United States, companies have wrestled with how to deal with a 100-year-old law called the Jones Act.

The Jones Act, passed by Congress in 1920, says that only U.S.-flagged ships can move cargo from one point in the United States to another. The ships must have been built in the U.S. and be crewed by Americans. The offshore wind industry uses big, specialized ships to assemble the turbines miles out at sea, but there is not a single U.S.-flagged ship right now that can do that work.

“If you bring a part, say you bring in a cell, which is where the generator is housed for an offshore wind turbine — those are only manufactured in other parts of the world right now, primarily in the EU or southeast Asia,” explained Katharine Kollins, with the Southeast Wind Coalition, which promotes wind energy.

“Normally you would place that on the U.S. coast. If you do that, you need a U.S.- flagged vessel to install that,” she said.

So companies that are doing the early offshore wind projects on the East Coast have had to come up with workarounds. Dominion Energy, based in Virginia, put up test turbines off the Virginia coast and had to ferry parts back and forth from Canada to avoid running afoul of the Jones Act.

Companies doing offshore wind farms can also use U.S.-flagged ships to ferry pieces out to the specialized assembly vessels.

Dominion is planning to build an offshore wind farm off the Virginia coast. There are also projects in the early stages off North Carolina’s Outer Banks and off the southeast tip of North Carolina.

Read the full article at Spectrum News

Report by feds, anglers cites offshore wind impacts on fish

April 3, 2023 — A joint study by two federal government scientific agencies and the commercial fishing industry documents numerous impacts that offshore wind power projects have on fish and marine mammals, including noise, vibration, electromagnetic fields and heat transfer that could alter the marine environment.

It comes as the offshore wind industry is poised to grow rapidly on the U.S. East Coast, where it is facing growing opposition from those who blame it for killing whales — something numerous scientific agencies say is not true.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance issued their report Wednesday after a 2 1/2-year-long study of the impacts existing offshore wind projects have on fish and marine mammals.

The goal was to solidify existing knowledge of the impacts and call for further research in many areas.

Read the full article at the Associated Press