Saving Seafood

Maine governor, congressional delegation want vital fishing area free of offshore wind development

November 18, 2023 — Despite last month’s proposed map for offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine being dubbed a “victory” for the fishing industry, Maine’s congressional delegation and Gov. Janet Mills are calling for more.

Along with Mills, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King along with Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree sent a letter urging that all of a vital fishing area be excluded from the project, according to a news release from Golden’s office. The map proposed last month by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management excluded most, but not all, of Lobster Management Area 1.

“We want to ensure that any areas leased in the Gulf of Maine avoid and at the very least minimize impacts to the fishing industry whenever possible,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

Could wind turbines affect right whales’ food source? More study needed, says new report

November 16, 2023 — More research is needed to determine whether offshore wind turbines will affect North Atlantic right whales’ food source around the Nantucket Shoals, scientists have concluded in a new report. And it may be challenging to divorce those impacts from those brought by climate change.

Right whales, a critically endangered species, are using the shoals, an area of shallow waters, for breeding and feeding. The shoals lie east of several planned offshore wind projects. Last year, federal scientists expressed concern that wind projects could disrupt right whales’ food supply: dense collections of tiny organisms, called zooplankton.

In response, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the lead agency on offshore wind development, convened an independent committee in April to evaluate what impacts wind turbines might have on the shoals and the whales’ prey.

However, due to knowledge gaps and a lack of research on this side of the Atlantic, the answers remain elusive.

“The studies available about the effects and implications of wind farms on local ecosystems are not sufficient to say with absolute certainty whether the turbines would have effects,” said committee chair Eileen Hofmann, a professor at Old Dominion University and chair of the scientific committee, which worked under the National Academies of Sciences.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

As the US begins to build offshore wind farms, scientists say many questions remain about impacts on the oceans and marine life

November 16, 2023 — As renewable energy production expands across the U.S., the environmental impacts of these new sources are receiving increased attention. In a recent report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examined whether and how constructing offshore wind farms in the Nantucket Shoals region, southeast of Massachusetts, could affect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The Conversation asked marine scientists Erin L. Meyer-Gutbrod, Douglas Nowacek, Eileen E. Hofmann and Josh Kohut, all of whom served on the study committee, to explain the report’s key findings.

Why did this study focus on such a specific site?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior and regulates offshore energy production, asked the National Academies to conduct this study. Regulators wanted to better understand how installing and operating offshore, fixed-bottom wind turbine generators would affect physical oceanographic processes, such as tides, waves and currents, and in turn how those changes could affect the ecosystem.

For example, offshore wind turbines decrease wind speeds behind them, and the presence of their structures makes the water more turbulent. These changes could affect ocean currents, surface wind speeds and other factors that influence hydrodynamics – the structure and movement of the water around the turbines.

The Nantucket Shoals region is a large, shallow area in the Atlantic that extends south of Cape Cod. Our report focused on it because this is the first large-scale offshore wind farm area in the U.S., and the region has been included in several recent hydrodynamic modeling studies.

Why are North Atlantic right whales of special concern?

North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. Scientists estimate that the population is down to just 356 animals.

This species was almost driven to extinction after centuries of commercial whaling. Even though the whales have been protected from whaling for almost 100 years, they are still accidentally killed when they are hit by vessels or become entangled in fishing gear. These two sources of mortality are responsible for most documented juvenile and adult right whale deaths over the past 25 years.

There are options for protecting them, such as slowing or rerouting boats, shortening the fishing season or even modifying fishing gear to make it more whale-safe. However, regulators need to know where the whales are going to be and when they’ll be there, so they can put those protections in place.

It’s usually hard to figure out where whales are – they have a large habitat and spend most of their time below the surface of the water, where observers can’t see them. Recently it’s gotten even harder, because climate change is causing whales to shift where and when they feed.

Currently, right whales are spending more time around the Nantucket Shoals region. This means scientists and managers need to make sure that wind energy development in the area is happening safely and that threats to whales in the area are reduced.

Read the full article at The Conversation

VIRGINIA: Siemens Gamesa scraps plans to build blades for offshore wind turbines on Virginia’s coast

November 13, 2023 — A European company has canceled plans to build blades for offshore wind turbines in coastal Virginia, the latest sign of struggle within the U.S.’s nascent industry.

Siemens Gamesa confirmed the cancellation in a statement Friday. The company’s proposed $200 million factory at the Port of Virginia in Portsmouth would have created more than 300 jobs and aided the state in its aspirations to become a hub for offshore wind projects as part of the nation’s efforts to tackle climate change.

The change in plans by the Spain-based firm comes at a time when inflation, raised interest rates and supply chain issues have cut into the profitability — and even the viability — of some offshore wind projects in the U.S.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: With Ørsted’s offshore wind farms stopped, what will happen to $300M in guarantees?

November 13, 2023 — An offshore wind developer that is backing out of deals to build windfarms off New Jersey is under new criticism as the company attempts to pull out of paying millions of dollars in performance guarantees.

Denmark-based Ørsted announced last month it would not build two wind energy farms off the southern New Jersey coastline, despite initial approvals from New Jersey and federal officials.

This month, the company sent a letter to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities stating it withdrawing a Compliance Filing on its Ocean Wind 1 project. The company had deposited $200 million into escrow for the project, which would be put toward manufacturing facilities for turbine monopiles in Paulsboro, Gloucester County, according to board documents.

Read the full article at app.

Offshore wind power impact on right whales uncertain, says National Academies study

November 13, 2023 — Wind energy projects under construction off southern New England could have effects on the endangered North Atlantic right whale and ocean ecosystem in the Nantucket Shoals region. But it is difficult to determine how those impacts are different from ongoing climate change and other ecosystem trends, according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

“The report recommends further study and monitoring of the oceanography and ecology of the Nantucket Shoals region to fully understand the impact of future wind farms,” according to a summary from the academies.

Right whales have increased their use of Nantucket Shoals waters in recent years, and some scientists have recommended setting buffer areas around wind energy development areas to ensure future turbine operations don’t alter the local ocean ecosystem.

The National Academies study was commissioned by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to address those concerns. The resulting 106-page paper released Oct. 13 concludes that much more detailed study and modeling is required to predict how operating massive wind turbines may change wind and water currents, and food available for whales.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

OREGON: Oregon Tribes declare opposition to wind energy areas

November 13, 2023 — Oregon Indian tribes this week said that they oppose two draft wind energy areas off the state’s coast, over their concerns about how fisheries and cultural resources could be affected.

In a statement the Tribal Council of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians said it recently passed a unanimous resolution expressing the opposition, meeting a deadline for comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

After meetings with BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein, “it was apparent to the Tribe that its concerns regarding offshore wind development’s impacts to fisheries and cultural resources were not going to be addressed in a meaningful way,” Tribal Council Chair Brad Kneaper said in a statement Nov. 8. “We recognize that all energy development has impacts and BOEM has failed to provide assurance that wind energy development will do good and not harm the Tribe, its members, and the greater coastal community.”

The council said its comments to BOEM have included requests that wind energy areas be at least 12 nautical miles off the continental shelf “to preserve “important, cultural viewsheds” and “avoid areas critical to resident and migratory species, including important areas for fishing.”

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Where is glauconite, the seafloor mineral challenging offshore wind?

November 13, 2023 — As offshore wind developers run into glauconite, a mineral that presents challenges for wind turbine installation, the U.S. Geological Survey is conducting a monthslong study to identify exactly where glauconite is already known to be.

The study began in early summer, after some offshore wind developers found glauconite on parts of the seafloor they’ve leased for wind farms — a series of discoveries that The Light reported on last month. Government geologists will focus on a variety of seafloor features that might challenge renewable energy infrastructure, including shallow pockets of natural gas and underwater landslides as well as glauconite.

In the coming months, scientists will review data from the last wide-scale effort to sample the U.S. Atlantic seafloor for glauconite — which happened in the 1960s and 1970s.

“This is a study that doesn’t involve collecting new data,” said Laura Brothers, a marine geologist with the Geological Survey, in an interview with The Light. “We’re going to be combing through all the publicly available and trusted sources of data regarding things that can be hazardous for infrastructure placement and development offshore.”

The study will also examine glauconite deposits on land. “We’ll look at where glauconite is known to occur onshore and what layers of rocks are known to have it,” Brothers said, “to get the best idea we can about where it can be offshore. It’s kind of the best we can do without collecting a substantial amount of new data.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Fishing industry in ‘fight of our lives’ over offshore wind

November 10, 2023 — The drive to develop U.S. offshore wind industry is growing along the West Coast, and fishermen should pay close attention to the political and legal battles already ongoing in the Atlantic states, a panel of experienced activists said at the Pacific Marine Expo Thursday in Seattle.

“I’ve been fighting offshore wind since 2003,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. In those early years, the first proposed projects “died because of the cost,” she said.

Today, “there are a multitude of projects going on,” Brady said, as a screen flashed map graphics showing about 30 proposed wind turbine developments from the Gulf of Maine to the Carolinas, and now more off California and Oregon.

California fishermen were later observers to what is now a concerted push by federal and state governments, but now they too are alarmed, said Jeremiah O’Brien, vice president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Association.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

New England lobstermen threaten to sue feds over planned Massachusetts fishing closure

November 10, 2023 — New England lobstermen are threatening to sue a federal agency planning to make fishing on Massachusetts waters even more challenging from February until May, when they already face restrictions on where they are allowed to tend to their livelihood.

NOAA Fisheries is looking to permanently add a wedge between state and federal waters to an existing closure that stretches roughly 9,000 square miles off the Massachusetts coast, a measure feds have put in place to preserve the North Atlantic right whale.

An emergency rule prohibited trap and pot fishery buoy lines on the wedge during the past two years, but the feds are looking to make the zone permanent and have the backing of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

The proposed permanent expansion to the Massachusetts Restricted Area has caught lobstermen by surprise.

Dustin Delano, chief operating officer of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, took exception to the “recklessness” of the proposal after an amendment was included in this year’s $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that looked to delay protections for the North Atlantic right whale by six years.

Read the full article at Boston Herald