Saving Seafood

US fishing alliance challenges offshore wind study

July 2, 2020 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has called for a correction to a US Coast Guard (USCG) offshore wind study.

Referring to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study (MARIPARS), the fishing industry group has cited “serious foundational and analytical errors that merit correction”.

On 29 June RODA filed a formal Request for Correction under the Information Quality Act in order to “improve the objectivity and utility” of the disseminated information.

The MARIPARS study examined current waterway uses in the areas off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which are sites of proposed offshore wind energy development.

RODA stated: “Understanding these ocean use patterns is critical for successfully designing any offshore development, and for minimising interactions between the proposed developments and existing activity.

“Unfortunately, the Coast Guard’s final report, issued on 27 May, contained several key errors, and the process ‘failed to address nearly all of the substantive comments from fisheries professionals’”.

Read the full story at ReNews

Coast Guard challenged on offshore wind traffic study

July 2, 2020 — A Coast Guard study that recommends against designated vessel transit lanes through New England offshore wind turbine arrays “contains serious foundational and analytical errors that merit correction,” commercial fishing advocates say in a formal objection to the findings.

The Coast Guard’s Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study endorsed wind power developers’ proposal for a uniform grid layout of 1 nautical mile between turbine towers on their neighboring federal leases off southern New England.

The report found fault with a proposal for up to six vessel transit lanes, up to four nautical miles wide, that was proposed by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing industry groups.

Developers of Vineyard Wind, the first 800-megawatt project to start construction in the region, and their supporters stressed the Coast Guard’s support for a uniform grid layout as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management commenced public hearings on its environmental review of the plan.

RODA fired back this week, filing a request to revisit the Coast Guard’s study that was released in the May 27 issue of the Federal Register.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

US completes construction of second offshore wind farm

July 1, 2020 — The second offshore wind farm in the U.S. has been completed, featuring the installation of a two-turbine, 12-megawatt pilot facility 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. The project was completed by Dominion Energy.

The first U.S. offshore wind farm is a five-turbine facility off the coast of Rhode Island, the Block Island Wind Farm.

Called the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project, this new wind farm is the first to be approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to be installed in federal waters, and the second constructed in the United States, according to a press release.

The turbines will undergo testing before being used later this summer. At peak output, they will produce enough power for 3,000 Virginia households.

“The construction of these two turbines is a major milestone not only for offshore wind in Virginia but also for offshore wind in the United States,” said Dominion Energy Chairman, President and CEO Thomas F. Farrell II in a prepared statement. “Clean energy jobs have the potential to serve as a catalyst to re-ignite the economy following the impacts of the pandemic and continue driving down carbon emissions.”

Read the full story at The Hill

Seafreeze Limited, Sea Fresh USA nab MSC certification for loligo, illex squid

June 30, 2020 — Seafreeze Limited and Sea Fresh USA, both based in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, U.S.A., have achieved Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for their loligo and illex squid fisheries.

The certification was granted by SCS Global Services for the company’s catches of loligo or longfin squid (Doryteuthis (Amerigo) pealeii) and Northern shortfin squid (Illex illecebrosus), following a 10-month assessment. The certification is good through 2025, subject to annual audits to ensure the MSC standard continues to be met.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New England looks to Europe to assess environmental impacts of offshore energy facilities

June 24, 2020 — Rhode Island is still the only state in the country with an offshore wind farm, but that will change in the coming years as wind farms are built along the entire Eastern Seaboard, from Virginia all the way up to Maine.

Now five years old, the Block Island wind farm, consisting of just five turbines, has been the subject of considerable study as scientists determine what impacts, if any, the construction of the facility and the turbines themselves are having on the ecosystem. Researchers are also looking to the future, when thousands of wind turbines will be coming online.

At the second of four webinars in the 17th annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium, scientists from the University of Rhode Island and elsewhere heard from researchers in Europe, where offshore wind power has been commonplace for decades.

Entitled “Offshore Renewable Energy — Changes in Habitats and Ecosystems,” the June 15 symposium focused on the impacts of individual turbines and larger-scale wind energy installations on the diversity and interactions of marine species.

Emma Sheehan of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom and Jan Vanaverbeke of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences in Belgium presented some of the findings of their research on the environmental impacts of large-scale commercial wind and wave energy farms.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Coast Guard backs wind industry on turbine layout

June 1, 2020 — The offshore wind power industry cleared one of its last remaining bureaucratic hurdles Wednesday with the release of a long-awaited report from the Coast Guard that essentially agrees with an industry proposal on turbine layout.

The Coast Guard’s Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study has concluded that turbines should be spaced 1.2 miles apart and oriented in the same direction across seven offshore wind lease areas totaling around 1,400 square miles south of Nantucket.

Concerned with vessel safety and the ability to maneuver while fishing, some fishermen and industry groups sought larger lanes, as wide as 4 miles, to transit to fishing grounds, but the five wind power companies holding the leases said that would force them to crowd turbines outside the travel lanes, making it less safe to navigate and fish.

The offshore wind leaseholders — Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind — had been concerned that some of the layouts proposed by other stakeholders could reduce the number of turbines and power generation. The increasing efficiency and power capacity of newer turbines have alleviated some of that concern.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Coast Guard favors turbine corridors sought by energy developers

May 28, 2020 — The U.S. Coast Guard has concluded that the best way to maintain maritime safety and ease of navigation in the offshore wind development areas south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket is to install turbines in a uniform layout to create predictable navigation corridors.

The results of the Coast Guard’s Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study are largely in line with a proposal that the five developers that hold leases for offshore wind sites off New England made late last year to orient their turbines in fixed east-to-west rows and north-to-south columns spaced one nautical mile apart.

Having a consistent turbine layout across the seven adjacent lease areas, the companies said, would provide fishermen with the benefit of not having to change their practices as they pass from one lease area to another, and would promote safe maritime navigation. The Coast Guard agreed.

“The USCG has determined that if the MA/RI [Wind Energy Area] turbine layout is developed along a standard and uniform grid pattern, formal or informal vessel routing measures would not be required as such a grid pattern will result in the functional equivalent of numerous navigation corridors that can safely accommodate both transits through and fishing within the WEA,” the Guard wrote in a summary of its findings published in the Federal Register.

Read the full story at the Taunton Daily Gazette

United States Coast Guard Announces the Completion of The Areas Offshore of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study

May 27, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today the United States Coast Guard announced the completion of The Areas Offshore of Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study. The study focused on the seven adjacent leased areas of the outer continental shelf south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and east of Rhode Island that together constitute the Massachusetts/Rhode Island Wind Energy Area (MA/RI WEA). The study was conducted to (1) determine what, if any, navigational safety concerns exist with vessel transits in the study area; (2) determine whether to recommend changes to enhance navigational safety by examining existing shipping routes and waterway uses as any or all of the lease areas within the MA/RI WEA are partially or fully developed as wind farms; and (3) to evaluate the need for establishing vessel routing measures.

For more information read the notice published in the Federal Register or the final report posted online.

Seafood industry’s fragmentation makes recovery harder

May 26, 2020 — The seafood lobby says assistance from the federal government has not been enough to help everyone along the supply chain. That is leaving fishermen, processors and distributors worried about their ability to stay in business as the economic slowdown from the pandemic ravages the industry.

Various sectors are getting a $300 million boost from a coronavirus emergency aid package from Congress that will be distributed by states to help make up for lost sales after restaurants closed their doors. In addition, the Agriculture Department has promised to buy up $70 million of catfish, haddock, pollock and redfish to distribute to food banks and nutrition programs.

An industry coalition asked the Trump administration in late March for a combined $4 billion to be spent on buying surplus seafood, supporting supply chains and aiding fisheries, but only a fraction of that has been awarded.

Some in the industry say the meager aid doled out so far reinforces a long-held complaint that the industry is neglected on Capitol Hill, where power players like the beef and pork industries dominate in agriculture. The industry’s fragmented nature also makes it difficult to form a political force, compared with other agriculture sectors that lobby to support producers of a single animal, especially those from politically powerful farm states in the Midwest and South.

“The U.S. fishing industry is overlooked a lot when it comes to the food supply,” said Jason Jarvis, a fisherman in Rhode Island who catches fluke, black sea bass and scup. “Now it’s going to change. I think it has to. We’re looking at empty stores.”

Read the full story at Politico

Four New Studies to Examine Fisheries, Offshore Wind

May 21, 2020 — With the future of offshore wind waiting on the outcome of a major federal study, Massachusetts and Rhode Island officials announced plans Wednesday to take a look at one of the topics at the center of some of the tension about shared ocean usage: the fisheries.

The two states and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced grants worth $1.1 million to four institutions to conduct research on recreational and commercial fisheries, seabed habitat, and offshore wind policies in Europe.

“The continued success of offshore industries in the United States requires strong coordination and consultation with our state partners,” BOEM Acting Director Walter Cruickshank said. “The studies announced today will help ensure BOEM has sufficient baseline information to support its environmental assessments of offshore wind projects on the Atlantic OCS.”

According to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the studies will “advance the assessment of the interactions between offshore wind development and fisheries in the northeast” and “will help establish baseline datasets on fisheries and seabed habitat.” The initiative will also support and inform a regional fisheries science and monitoring program being developed under the Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA).

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times