Saving Seafood

Rhode Island plans to buy more offshore wind power to help meet goal of 100% renewable energy

March 21, 2022 — Gov. Dan McKee is moving ahead with a plan to ramp up Rhode Island’s supply of power from offshore wind farms that would be developed off the coast of Southern New England.

Legislation introduced in the General Assembly at the request of the McKee administration would require that a request for proposals be issued this summer for another 600 megawatts of offshore wind energy.

The plan comes despite uncertainty over the sale of National Grid’s electric and natural gas operations in Rhode Island. The transaction with Pennsylvania-based PPL Corp. is on hold pending court appeals from the attorneys general in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Any new contracts for offshore wind would have to be signed by whichever company owns the utility business.

Bill aims to address fisheries impacts and other issues

The legislation also aims to address other areas of controversy and head off conflicts over individual offshore wind proposals before they may arise.

Recent projects planned for the ocean waters off Rhode Island and Massachusetts have run into opposition from commercial fishermen who complain that siting what could eventually be hundreds of turbines in valuable fishing grounds will interfere with their livelihoods.

The bill would require developers to provide information on turbine layouts and locations during the procurement process. And they would have to submit a fisheries mitigation plan. That information has typically been released once contracts have been approved.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

New York breaks ground on 1st offshore wind farm, would be largest in U.S.

February 14, 2022 — The construction of a dozen wind turbines 35 miles off Long Island’s eastern tip has begun, officials said Friday, marking the state’s first offshore wind project launch.

The South Fork Wind Farm is planned to sit south of Rhode Island and send power to East Hampton. It could also put New York into rare air: Gov. Hochul has said the state will boast the largest offshore wind farm in the Western Hemisphere after the project’s completion.

The farm is projected to power up to 70,000 homes. New York is also whipping up several larger offshore wind plants that the government estimated will collectively power more than 2 million homes and create thousands of jobs.

“If you ask what the energy future looks like, I say: The answer my friends is blowing in the wind,” Gov. Hochul said in a rhetorical nod to Bob Dylan at the Friday groundbreaking ceremony. “This is just the beginning.”

Read the full story at the New York Daily News

Herring fishermen file appeal brief in at-sea monitoring case

February 2, 2022 — Atlantic herring fishermen who lost their case in 2021 against the federal government regarding an at-sea monitoring program filed their opening brief late last week to an appellate court seeking to overturn the decision.

That brief, which was filed to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday, 28 January, claims Rhode Island U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Sullivan erred last year when she ruled the Magnuson-Stevens Act allowed the government to order the fishermen to cover the costs for monitors on their vessels.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

The Town Dock expands, redesigns calamari line

January 26, 2022 — Calamari supplier The Town Dock recently expanded and redesigned its retail product line.

The Narragansett, Rhode Island, U.S.A.-based company updated its packaging, including adding a recipe on the back of each box with a QR code taking consumers directly to a recipe video showing step-by-step cooking instructions.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Texas Public Policy Foundation Hosts Fishermen to Talk Wind Impacts

January 24, 2022 — The following was released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation: 

 

The growing wind industry is increasingly looking to offshore to capture ample wind resources, especially in the Northeast U.S. However, the impact of this development on commercial fishermen, endangered species, and grid reliability is being ignored. Hear from a group of Rhode Island fishermen who are suing the federal government to properly enforce its laws and how Texas could be impacted by the outcome.

Speakers:
Bonnie Brady – Exec. Director, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association
Meghan Lapp – Fisheries Liaison and General Manager, Seafreeze Shoreside
Rep. Jared Patterson – Texas State Representative
The Hon. Jason Isaac – Director of Life:Powered, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Construction to begin soon on new US offshore wind farm

January 20, 2022 — Construction will soon begin on the second commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project to gain approval in the United States, the developers said.

The U.S. Department of the Interior approved it in November, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued its approval letter for the constructions and operations plan Tuesday, a major step in the federal process before construction can start.

Orsted, a Danish energy company, is developing the South Fork Wind project with utility Eversource off the coasts of New York and Rhode Island. They now expect the work onshore to begin by early February and offshore next year for as many as 12 turbines.

President Joe Biden has set a goal to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes. In November, work began on the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States, the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts.

Read the full story from the AP at ABC News

Rhode Island commercial fishers join anti-Vineyard Wind lawsuit

December 23, 2021 — Lawyers for a Texas-based libertarian think tank, joined by members of the Rhode Island commercial fishing industry, have filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to stop the Vineyard Wind project from moving forward.

An 85-page complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claims that federal regulators improperly permitted Vineyard Wind I, the offshore wind project that would place 62 turbines 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard while powering 400,000 Massachusetts homes.

Some commercial fishing interests in the Northeast have been trying to stop the project. In the latest round, a handful of plaintiffs across three states are represented by lawyers with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and its Center for the American Future. The foundation bills itself as a non-profit with a mission “to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation.”

The Rhode Island plaintiffs include Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. — a Port Judith fish dealer and portside service provider — and two small fishing companies owned by Thomas E. Williams of Westerly. The Northeast Fisheries Sector XIII — a Massachusetts-based coalition of fisheries permit holders — and New York’s Long Island Commercial Fishing Association area also parties to the lawsuit.

Read the full story at the Boston Business Journal

Texas Public Policy Foundation brings fishermen’s lawsuit against Vineyard Wind

December 22, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has so prioritized offshore wind energy development that it is bypassing real environmental review and failing to consider alternative sites that won’t harm the commercial fishing industry, charges a lawsuit brought by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Filed Dec. 15 in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of six fishing businesses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York, the action challenges BOEM and other federal agencies on their review of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project off southern New England.

The lead plaintiff, Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. of North Kingston, R.I., is a homeport and major processor for the Northeast squid fleet. Captains there are adamant they will not be able to fish if Vineyard Wind and other planned turbine arrays are erected in those waters.

Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison at Seafreeze and a vocal advocate for its fishermen, said she had heard mention of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in conversation, “kind of along the lines of Pacific Legal Foundation which litigated for the fishing industry on the Northeast marine monument” fishing restrictions recently reinstated by the Biden administration.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

OPINION: Windfarm plans for Atlantic coast hit fishermen hard and threaten US food supply

December 20, 2021 — GE’s new Haliade-X offshore wind turbine is enormous—each blade is longer than a football field. It’s nearly three football fields in height. Its imprint on the seabed is likewise gigantic, and not merely because of the concrete base that anchors it. Miles and miles of transmission lines must be buried then covered over in debris.

So when ground was broken last month on Vineyard Wind 1 in the waters off of Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, local families involved in the fishing industry for generations wondered how the planned 62 (for now) wind turbines would affect the fishing grounds, their ability to navigate those waters—and the nation’s food supply.

Tom Williams, a lifelong fisherman whose sons now captain the family’s two boats, doesn’t scare easily—not after the storms, regulations and economic ups and downs he’s weathered. But the wind farms planned for much of the nation’s Atlantic coastline do scare him. His own extended family began fishing in Rhode Island in 1922.

Read the full opinion piece at Fox News

 

Rhode Island to launch year-long local seafood marketing campaign

December 2, 2021 — Starting in January, the State of Rhode Island is hoping to encourage residents and visitors to seek out locally caught seafood to help grow the in-state seafood industry.  They’ll do so by way of a year-long marketing campaign.

Bob Ballou with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management says, “What we want to try to do with this program is promote the availability of this abundant, diverse and delicious supply of fresh, local seafood to help stimulate the local market.”

The campaign will run for all of 2022, funded by $300,000 in federal grant money.  According to the DEM, commercial fishing in the state supports more than 4,000 jobs and harvests 80,000,000 pounds of seafood per year.

Read the full story at ABC 6