Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Making a Splash: Reed Delivers $500,000 for RI Fisheries Research

October 11, 2023 — The following was released by Jack Reed:

Rhode Island’s commercial fisheries and seafood sectors account for more than 4,300 jobs and drive $420 million in statewide economic impact, according to a joint Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation-University of Rhode Island study.

In an effort to help ensure continued growth and sustainability of Rhode Island’s commercial fishing sector amidst evolving challenges with ocean health, U.S. Senator Jack Reed today delivered a $500,000 federal earmark to finance a deep dive study that will help the Ocean State’s commercial fishermen.

Senator Reed joined David Bethoney, PhD, Executive Director of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF); local fishermen; and research collaborators at Point Judith’s Superior Trawl facility to celebrate this federal funding that will advance and enhance the organization’s efforts to understand, manage, and develop innovative solutions to challenges faced by commercial fishermen.

“As climate change rapidly alters the coastal landscape and oceans, we’ve got to support our commercial fishermen and help them adapt while also taking good care of our commercial fisheries.  The well-being of both our fishermen and fisheries is critical to the Blue Economy and our economic future,” said Senator Reed.  “CFRF research is critical to resilient and sustainable fisheries and ensuring commercial fishermen have a voice and a say when it comes to policies that impact their livelihoods.  This new funding will deepen our understanding of modern ocean challenges.  The data collected by CFRF and their partners will be used to ensure commercial fishermen have appropriate access rights and develop innovative solutions to ensure our commercial fisheries are healthy, resilient, and can thrive.”

“We are excited and grateful for this opportunity to build on initiatives that empower the commercial fishing community to help us understand and address significant change in the ocean environment,” said David Bethoney, PhD, Executive Director of CFRF.

With this federal earmark, CFRF will leverage and grow cooperative research efforts on issues affecting fishermen in Rhode Island and across southern New England. This work will utilize the knowledge of local fishermen to better understand and mitigate challenges facing the fishing sector, like climate change, rapidly warming waters, and plastic pollution. Specifically, CFRF will use these federal funds to:

  • Modernize its Shelf Research Fleet initiative;
  • Add juvenile black seabass monitoring to the Black Seabass Research Fleet;
  • Create an informed implementation strategy for automatic squid jigging, and;
  • Continue ghost gear removal from Rhode Island waters.

Additionally, CFRF plans to invite more local fishermen to participate in these research initiatives, creating a path for fishermen to supplement and diversify their incomes. For example, the Shelf Research Fleet has included 18 fishermen since the project first started to collect profiles of water temperature and salinity at two-week intervals across the continental shelf.  This research effort has already identified an increase in bottom intrusions of warm, salty water that may have gone undetected without their monitoring.

A senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Reed secured this $500,000 earmark in the fiscal year 2023 consolidated appropriations law. The funding will be administered by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Earlier this year, Senator Reed also delivered $2.4 million to build a new shellfish hatchery and research center that will support the Ocean State’s aquaculture and seafood industries. This project is a collaboration between the University of Rhode Island and Matunuck Oyster Farm.

The Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation is a nonprofit established by commercial fishermen to conduct collaborative fisheries research and to carry out education projects.

New England states join to buy offshore wind power as US industry struggles

October 5, 2023 — Three U.S. states in New England – Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut – on Wednesday agreed to jointly procure offshore wind power as soaring interest rates and rising equipment and labor costs have made some projects uneconomic.

By joining forces, the states hope to counter the pain rippling across the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, which is expected to play a key part in decarbonizing the power sector and revitalizing domestic manufacturing.

Earlier this week, another offshore wind developer canceled agreements to sell power to local utilities – this time in Connecticut – because the previously agreed upon prices for that power was too low to cover the rising cost of building the project.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced the agreement between the three states at the American Clean Power Association’s Offshore WINDPOWER Conference in Boston, according to a press release on the governor’s website.

Read the full article at Reuters

RHODE ISLAND: Ocean State On the Hook: Warming Coastal Waters Will Impact Fisheries, Tourism

October 5, 2023 — Since Rhode Island calls itself the Ocean State, hypes its beaches, named calamari the official state appetizer, paid to place unappetizing stuffie installations made of Styrofoam in airports around the country, and relies heavily on coastal tourism for its economic survival, it stands to reason its elected officials, business owners, residents, and visitors are concerned about the health of the planet’s marine waters, especially those that lap the local coastline and play host to squid and quahogs.

They should be. The Northwest Atlantic Ocean — southern New England’s coast sits in the middle of it — is among the planet’s fastest-warming marine waters.

“Climate-driven changes in the oceans are projected to yield an average increase of 1° to 6°C in sea surface temperatures by 2100, which is likely to have profound effects on marine ecosystems and the communities, businesses, and fisheries that rely on them,” according to a study published in August.

The life- and economy-sustaining marine ecosystem is vulnerable to human influences. There is a limit to the abuse the oceans can take and still function as the planet’s lungs and circulatory system.

The incessant burning of fossil fuels, the dragging of industrial fishing gear along the seafloor, overfishing, and the dumping — directly and indirectly — of so much of our waste into the ocean is changing its composition. Biodiversity in the world’s marine waters is rapidly declining. Corals are bleaching. The oceans are warming, acidifying, and plastifying. The saltwater system is dying, or at least running a high fever. It is sick.

“New England’s ocean is facing a crisis on multiple fronts,” said Priscilla Brooks, vice president of ocean conservation at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). “Climate change, overfishing, pollution, and habitat destruction are combining to dangerously affect marine life which, if left unchecked, does not bode well for the future of our ocean.”

Simply put, we need to start treating the marine environment better. In fact, we need to provide some universal health care. Many people living in this region, in fact, are troubled by the oceans’ current condition.

A recent CLF poll found that New Englanders are increasingly worried about ocean health. They cited polluted runoff, plastic, climate change, overfishing, and habitat and species loss as significant concerns. Respondents strongly preferred establishing protected areas to mitigate these threats.

We could also stop killing the oceans’ top predators.

Read the full article at ecoRI

RHODE ISLAND: RI Energy hopes to build 1200MW offshore wind farm

September 29, 2023 — Despite the Ocean State’s largest utility company pulling out of another offshore wind project earlier this year, Rhode Island Energy is still interested in developing clean energy projects of its own.

The company announced Thursday that it will issue an official request for project proposals to build a 1200-megawatt offshore wind farm in October.

The McKee administration said submissions to the RFP will likely be due in early 2024 and will be evaluated by Rhode Island Energy, the Office of Energy Resources, and the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers.

Read the full article at WPRI

Two Sides to Wind Farm Debate: Ocean Perils vs. Much-Needed Renewable Energy

September 23, 2023 — The Pulitzer Center supported this story through its Connected Coastlines project.

A Rhode Island citizen activist made a powerful pitch about the dangers of offshore wind projects to a mostly supportive audience in Westport, Mass., on Tuesday, and a small group of pro-offshore wind observers pushed back afterward, accusing the speaker of bias and distortion.

The speaker at the Sept. 19 event, Lisa Knight, is one of the founders and leaders of Green Oceans, a Little Compton-based citizens group that is using media, small-group meetings, and promises of forthcoming legal actions to block wind projects in development off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

She said, “People believe what they want to believe,” a comment that was heartily seconded by a wind-farm supporter.

Knight’s comments were delivered to a live audience and were also livestreamed on YouTube, one of a series of gatherings Green Oceans had hosted since the start of this year. She touched on many topics, including the fossil fuel industry origins of some wind developers; potential harms of wind farms to the ocean environment and animals; dangers to fishermen; costs of electricity created by wind power; and the permitting decisions of federal and state agencies that, she said, are giving wind developers a free pass.

About 60 people attended the talk, and a few dozen more watched online.

During the Q&A period, a man in the audience said, “Listening to this, I don’t know who the bad guys are.” Knight replied, “They are the same people,” pursuing her earlier theme that wind farm developers are former oil industry people.

At present, the South Fork and Vineyard Wind projects are permitted and under construction from bases in Long Island, N.Y., and New Bedford, Mass. Revolution Wind, to be constructed from ports in Rhode Island, has received most of its permits and hopes to begin construction next year. SouthCoast, Sunrise, Revolution 2, and other wind projects are grinding through the permitting process. Regardless of where the wind-generated electricity makes landfall, the turbines will be built in a giant patch of the ocean, or wind lease area, southeast of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

Stephen Porder, a professor at Brown University, the associate provost for sustainability, and part of a group of pro-wind industry activists, watched the session online and commented afterward. He said Knight’s talk was riddled with examples of cherry-picking data “to make it appear that something is happening when it is not.” Porder also said Knight often would “mistake correlation with causation,” meaning that she assigned causes to events that simply happened at the same time.

“I’m getting older and the planet is getting warmer, but global warming is not causing me to get old,” Porder said, by way of illustrating many of Knight’s arguments.

Read the full article at ecoRI News

What do Orsted’s financial problems mean for Rhode Island’s stake in offshore wind?

September 11, 2023 — Orsted A/S, the offshore wind developer anchoring Rhode Island’s place in the industry, is facing rough seas.

The Danish wind giant said in an Aug. 29 announcement that it may write off $2.3 billion in its upcoming, third-quarter earnings. The warning, on the heels of the company’s  $87.8 million second-quarter loss, comes as supply chain slowdowns and interest rate hikes hamper a trio of East Coast projects, including the Revolution Wind project that will power Rhode Island. At best, costs are going up and schedules are behind, with the Ocean Wind project planned for New Jersey, now delayed from 2025 to 2026, executives said.

At worst, the company may abandon the project altogether.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

RHODE ISLAND: CRMC Fisherman’s Advisory Board Resigns in Protest

September 10, 2023 — Rhode Island fishermen are sounding the alarm about offshore wind farms. Last week, the nine-member Fisherman’s Advisory Board to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) resigned in protest of the council’s offshore wind approval process.

Members of the now-defunct board claim the CRMC has abandoned the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan and sidelined the fishing industry in its race to meet renewable energy procurement goals with rapid and massive industrial-scale offshore wind development.

Lanney Dellinger, a crab and lobster fisherman out of Newport and the chairman of the Fisherman’s Advisory Board, provided an overview of the motivation behind the mass resignation to Newport This Week on Sept. 2, detailing a multitude of complaints from recreational and commercial fishing interests.

The complaints fell into two main categories: the board’s conclusion that the fishing communities and industries they represent have been sidelined and ignored despite their specified role in the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan to the point that there is no longer any point in participating in the process; and fears of what some fishermen are describing as nearly apocalyptic outcomes for New England’s fisheries if the Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind, Sunrise Wind and future offshore leases are constructed on Coxes Ledge (an offshore fishing ground about 20 miles south of Pt. Judith) and other special habitat areas off the Rhode Island coastline.

Read the full article at Newport This Week

RHODE ISLAND: RI fishermen’s board resigns en masse over Biden admin-backed offshore wind farm: ‘Wholesale ocean destruction’

September 6, 2023 — A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.

The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.

The project falls under President Biden‘s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.

But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns

Read the full article at the New York Post

RHODE ISLAND: R.I. fishing panel resigns en masse over offshore wind approvals

September 5, 2023 — Fed up with state coastal regulators’ perceived “deference” to offshore wind developers, all nine members of an advisory panel of Rhode Island fishing industry representatives have quit.

In a letter sent Thursday, Aug. 31, to Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) Executive Director Jeff Willis, the entire Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board (FAB) declared its members were resigning effective immediately. The decision comes amid mounting tension between offshore wind developers and fishermen over the slew of offshore wind projects planned in and around Rhode Island waters.

“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” the letter, which was obtained by Rhode Island Current, stated. “Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”

Laura Dwyer, a spokesperson for the CRMC, said in an emailed response Friday that the agency was “disappointed” by the news.

“The FAB has provided valuable information and insight to the CRMC for its federal consistency reviews of offshore wind energy projects,” Dwyer said. “While unfortunate, these resignations do not affect the CRMC’s review scope, obligations and timelines as contained in the federal [regulations]. The CRMC remains hopeful that the Rhode Island fishing community will continue to participate in the public process for reviewing offshore wind energy projects, as well as any other projects affecting the fishery resources of the State.”

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

RHODE ISLAND: Fishermen’s Protests Muted as R.I. Coastal Board Approves Sunrise Wind Project

August 28, 2023 — After four and a half hours of expert presentations and audience pushback, the Coastal Resources Management Council unanimously approved the Sunrise Wind project that developers hope to build in 2025 on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The 84 turbines of Sunrise Wind would be built about 16 miles from Block Island in federal waters and would pipe electricity to Long Island, N.Y. But because of the wind facility’s location, Rhode Island has some limited approval powers under federal law.

A surprising thing about the Aug. 22 hearing were the scanty and muted objections voiced by Rhode Island fishermen, especially compared to the hours of boisterous arguments they aimed against Revolution Wind, another proposed offshore wind project, before the same board earlier this summer. (That project passed the CRMC and, this week, won a major federal approval.)

Fishermen at the recent Sunrise Wind hearing raised some of the same objections lobbed against Revolution Wind, including: loss of fishing income; dangers to fishermen working in and around the wind facility; problems with radar; the need for more onboard manpower for safety; and claims that CRMC is getting out ahead of yet-unpublished federal studies. They also claimed CRMC was flouting its own oversight regulations.

Read the full article at ecoRI News