Saving Seafood

Haunting clues emerge in 7-year fishing boat mystery after wreckage found off island

October 14, 2026 — An organization believes it has found the wreckage of a fishing boat that sank over seven years ago — potentially solving a mystery surrounding the deaths of two fishermen.

Green Oceans, a Rhode Island-based environmental organization, announced the discovery of what it believes is the F/V Mistress in the waters off Block Island in September.

The vessel sank Jan. 1, 2019, according to the organization.

Two fishermen died in the incident, and the U.S. Coast Guard searched for the vessel following the sinking but never located the wreckage.

The F/V Mistress was discovered approximately 92 feet underwater, just 50 feet from the base of a wind turbine at the Block Island Wind Farm, according to Green Oceans.

Read the full article at Fox News

Trump Administration Asks Court to Let It Re-Evaluate Revolution Wind’s COP

October 14, 2026 — The Trump administration is renewing its challenges to Ørsted’s offshore wind farm, Revolution Wind, located off the coast of Rhode Island. The Department of Justice is asking a District Court in the District of Columbia to remand its prior approval of the construction and operations plan (“COP”) for further review on a project that has completed construction and is in the final stages of commissioning.

It marks the third time the Trump administration has challenged the 704 MW wind farm project, which is contracted to supply power to Connecticut and Rhode Island. In August 2025, it sought to stop construction while the project was approximately 80 percent complete, but it was rejected by the courts. In December 2025, the administration included Revolution Wind in its stop-work orders, this time contending the operations posed a risk to national security due to the potential for radar interference. The courts again rejected the stop-work order and let the project resume construction in January 2026.

The Department of Justice made its new filing in a case being pursued by an environmental group that has been challenging the project in the courts for years. Green Ocean has been suing the Department of the Interior and Revolution Wind, contending the project would cause harm to the environment.

The new filing made on October 9 asked the court to grant Green Ocean a summary judgment on its claims against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, related to the approval of the project. Further, it says the Department of the Interior agrees that remand of its prior approval of the construction and operations plan (COP) for the Revolution Wind Project is warranted so that the agency can reevaluate its compliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

The fear factor: How blue crab fishing could reshape a salt marsh

October 13, 2026 — Fear changes behavior. For a ribbed mussel clinging to a New England salt marsh, the presence of a blue crab nearby can mean eating less and holding tighter to the marsh platform, bracing for danger. The crab doesn’t even have to attack.

That response — what scientists call a “fear effect” — is at the heart of research by University of Rhode Island graduate student Maja Nielsen. A master’s student in URI’s Biological and Environmental Sciences program working with Assistant Professor of Watershed Ecology Shelby Rinehart, Nielsen is studying whether fishing-driven shifts change how ribbed mussels respond to the threat of predation.

Predators shape prey populations in two ways, she explains: by eating them or by scaring them. “There’s some evidence that the fear effect may be even more important in determining ecosystem functions than the consumptive effect,” she said, “because predators can scare a lot more prey than they can eat.”

Blue crabs are not intentionally bullying mussels. Rather, ribbed mussels detect subtle shifts in the chemical compounds crabs release after feeding, triggering a fear response that changes their behavior.

Read the full article at the University of Rhode Island

Opinion: Reopen the investigation of the F/V Mistress

October 1, 2026 — The fishing vessel Mistress sank in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2019. Two of its three crew members were lost. More than seven years later, a private dive team documented a wreck believed to be the Mistress, roughly 50 feet from Turbine 1 at the Block Island Wind Farm.

That location deserves attention. In its mayday call, the crew said the vessel was “right below the Block Island Wind Farm.” A Coast Guard helicopter searched near the coordinates of the final distress signal but then abandoned a hover search after about half an hour amid poor visibility, low clouds, “windmills,” and high winds.

The team making the recent discovery used the mayday coordinates, the Coast Guard’s investigative report, and rumored accounts from mariners and divers to narrow its search. Side-scan sonar revealed wreckage just east of Turbine 1. Divers documented features and equipment that match photographs of the Mistress in the Coast Guard report. They also found what appear to be human remains among the wheelhouse debris.

The wreck was not the first indication of boat debris near the turbine. A BOEM-sponsored survey reported seeing “partial boat debris (e.g., paneling from a small boat hull)” around Turbine 1 in 2019, although it claims no footage was obtained. Why was that observation apparently never connected to the loss of the Mistress?

The new sonar image also shows a maintenance barge beside the turbine, with its legs or “spuds” planted close to the wreckage. Given the recurring maintenance activity at Turbine 1 since 2019, investigators should determine what seabed checks were performed, what operators observed, and whether earlier work disturbed the site.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Wind farms and rescue helicopters don’t mix, fishermen warned years ago. They were right

September 30, 2026 — An expedition team this week identified the wreck of the Mistress, a fishing vessel that sank next to a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island on Jan. 1, 2019, taking with it the captain and his nephew.

The discovery of the long-missing trawler and the remains of the two fishermen prompted demands for a federal investigation into whether the wind farm operator, Orsted, discovered the wreck years ago and kept it quiet.

The Mistress wreck has also revived calls to examine the safety risks associated with offshore wind turbines that, when positioned closely together, can make it virtually impossible for the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct nighttime rescues of distressed vessels, particularly in stormy weather.

The exact cause of the Mistress’ sinking hasn’t been determined.

There is no evidence the ship struck the easternmost turbine of the Block Island Wind Farm, where a private diving crew recently identified the sunken boat.

But the turbines forced the Coast Guard to abandon their rescue attempt in the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2019, when the Mistress had taken on water during a sudden storm and the captain issued a mayday call.

“They had a helicopter there, and they had to let it go,” said John Ansay, whose son, John Ansay Jr., went down with the Mistress two days after his 31st birthday.

Read the full article at The Washington Times

Offshore wind job training built for a boom is facing down a bust

September 22, 2026 — This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. ​

A former Navy sailor and union laborer from Local 1298 on Long Island, William “Billy” Bishop jumped at the chance to work on the water again when he learned two years ago about job opportunities on offshore wind construction projects.

After earning a safety certification from the National Offshore Wind Training Center — a collaboration between Long Island’s Suffolk County Community College, the Long Island Federation of Labor, and multinational wind farm developer Orsted — Bishop worked on a wind farm near Rhode Island. Now he’s doing structural inspections and maintenance on Sunrise Wind, which is under construction off the coast of Long Island in New York.

But the Trump administration’s efforts to crush offshore wind projects, part of its broader assault on clean energy, have created deep uncertainty for training programs like NOWTC and workers like Bishop.

“I would definitely do this forever, and I’ve looked into it since getting the job. But I see contracts are falling through nonstop now in America,” said Bishop. “This might be the last one for a while.”

In 2021, the Biden administration set a target to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, starting from almost zero, which jump-started a massive effort to train people for jobs in the industry. That rapid ramp-up would have required an estimated 77,000 workers — to build the wind farms, connect the turbines to the grid, operate and maintain the facilities, manufacture the rugged steel components, and more.

Read the full article at Grist

US Offshore Wind Project Revolution Wind Installs Last Turbine

September 21, 2026 — One of the few large offshore wind projects proceeding in the United States, Revolution Wind completed the installation of its 65th and final wind turbine. The project began delivering power in March despite repeated opposition from the Trump administration and now expects to complete its commissioning by the end of the year.

Revolution Wind is being developed in a 50-50 partnership between Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners’ Skyborn Renewables. Media reports indicate it represents an investment of $6.2 billion to develop and will become the third large, commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States to be completed. It is located in Rhode Island Sound, not too far from the Vineyard Wind and South Fork Wind projects, which have already been completed and commissioned.

The project received its final approvals in November 2023 after the companies noted more than nine years of planning and permitting. It has 20-year power purchase agreements to deliver 400 MW to Rhode Island and 304 MW to Connecticut.

The project started offshore construction in 2024, and by August 2025 it was reported to be nearly 80 percent complete. The first of its turbines was installed in September 2024, and by August 2025, Revolution Wind said 45 of the 65 Siemens Gamesa turbines were installed.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Opinion on The Maine Lobstermen Decision and Recent Federal Fisheries Actions

September 8, 2026 — The following opinion was published by Samuel Blatchley:

Three years ago the D.C. Circuit told the National Marine Fisheries Service it could not build a biological opinion on worst-case assumptions. Last week the agency wrote that principle into its own priorities.

In Maine Lobstermen’s Ass’n v. National Marine Fisheries Service, 70 F.4th 582 (D.C. Cir. 2023), the court held that the Service may not, when faced with uncertainty, give the benefit of the doubt to an endangered species by relying on worst-case scenarios or pessimistic assumptions. The ESA calls for an empirical judgment about what is likely. The effects of an action are those reasonably certain to occur, found on clear and substantial information. Projections the agency itself concedes are very likely wrong do not meet that standard. The court reversed, directed judgment for the lobstermen, and ordered the biological opinion vacated as applied to the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries. I was on the case for the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, alongside the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the State of Maine, and Lodge 207. Our clients were facing regulations that would have taken jobs and boats out of the water.

Two things happened last week that build on it.

On September 1 the House passed H.R. 9436, the Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act, 219 to 196, extending the current regulatory pause for the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries from 2028 to 2035. The Administration issued a statement strongly supporting passage. It now goes to the Senate.

On September 2 NOAA Fisheries issued its agency-level priorities. On the Northeast lobster fishery, the agency states it will not mandate ropeless gear, that any decision support tools or models used by the Take Reduction Team must be independently and empirically reviewed, and that any future Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan will rest on best available data rather than worst-case scenario modeling.

That last clause applies the principle the court enforced in 2023, and returns the agency to the position it had taken itself in 2019 before the biological opinion abandoned it.

Worth keeping the distinction clear. The bill would change a statute. The priorities document is a policy statement that amends nothing and can be withdrawn. What lasts is the record. The Take Reduction Team is building the file the next rule will stand on, and how its models get vetted will matter long after the announcement does.

Common sense science is not a slogan. It is what the statute already required, and what it took a court to enforce. The Senate should pass H.R. 9436, and the agency should be held to the standard it has now stated, so the next rule protects both the whale and the communities that fish alongside it.

#FisheriesLaw #Lobster #EndangeredSpeciesAct #RightWhale #AdministrativeLaw

Samuel P. Blatchley is a maritime, fisheries, and insurance attorney and Proctor in Admiralty at Eckland & Blando LLP, where he represents vessel owners, commercial fishermen, marine businesses, insurers, and industry organizations in complex litigation, regulatory matters, marine casualties, coverage disputes, and commercial disputes throughout the United States. His practice includes federal admiralty litigation, fisheries and environmental regulation, marine insurance, limitation of liability, vessel arrests and maritime liens, and matters involving NOAA Fisheries and other federal and state agencies. He has represented fishing-industry interests in significant state and federal litigation, including the D.C. Circuit challenge to NOAA Fisheries’ North Atlantic right whale regulations on behalf of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. Blatchley is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New York and is a graduate of Tulane University Law School, where he earned a Maritime Law Certificate and served on the Tulane Maritime Law Journal.

eDNA could play a bigger role in stock assessments

September 5, 2026 — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is backing legislation that would expand the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) in federal fish stock assessments, potentially giving fisheries managers another tool to collect more frequent and comprehensive data.

According to Cornell University, the Fisheries Science Modernization Act would direct NOAA to test and validate eDNA technologies for use alongside existing fishery assessment methods. The bill is led by Senator Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Senator Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, co-chairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus, and has eight republican, democratic, and independent co-sponsors.

NOAA currently develops stock assessments using methods including research vessel surveys, bottom trawls, acoustic sonar, longlines, and commercial fishing data. Those assessments ultimately help regional fisheries managers establish annual harvest levels.

The legislation calls for NOAA to expand its use of eDNA to increase survey coverage and frequency while potentially lowering costs.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Seafloor boulders challenge fishermen, and energy developers

August 18, 2026 — Boulder fields have strewn the sea floor off southern New England since the ice ages. Commercial fishermen have maneuvered around those obstacles for generations.

Now with offshore wind projects in the region, subsea cable installers have relocated some stones to make way – changing the bottom seascape and potentially creating new hazards for towed gear and access to traditional fishing grounds.

A new report from the Rhode Island Sea Grant Legal Program and the Marine Affairs Institute at Roger Williams University School of Law is titled Boulder Relocation for Offshore Energy Development in Rhode Island: Artificial Reefs and Cross-Industry Collaboration.

The paper examines legal and policy considerations around the permitting of boulder relocation – and looks at how the process could “better incorporate commercial fishermen into planning and decision-making,” according to a Sea Grant summary.

Read the full article at WorkBoat