Saving Seafood

Why Texas gets 9 miles of off-shore territory but Louisiana gets 3 — and how it could change

December 2, 2024 — U.S. Rep. Garret Graves intends to sprint toward the finish line for the 118th Congress, which convenes Monday and disbands in a month, by pushing an issue he has been working since he was a Capitol Hill staffer 20 years ago.

“This has been an ongoing effort for me, for many years, to give Louisiana parity,” Graves said.

Graves, a Baton Rouge Republican who steps down when the 119th Congress assumes office on Jan. 3, teamed with Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, on a bill that would give Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama the same offshore sovereignty as Texas and Florida — moving the boundary line from three nautical miles to nine — thereby allowing Louisiana control of more energy exploration and fishing rights.

Graves said last week in announcing the Offshore Parity Act of 2024, “I’m not sure who was negotiating for us generations ago, but that is just ridiculous.”

History, rather than bonehead negotiators, played a greater role in setting state sovereignty over offshore waters.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

TEXAS: BOEM To Close TX Offshore Wind Public Comment

September 13, 2024 — Stakeholders and much of the Lone Star State’s fishing industry are holding their breath Thursday as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management closes the public comment period at midnight on some contentious potential offshore wind projects.

About 10 parties have commented on the federal BOEM registry as of Thursday afternoon.

In its comments, the Southern Shrimping Alliance (SSA) appeared alarmed at the danger it believes this offshore wind project could pose to a major Texas industry. Over 34 meticulously cited pages, it made its case, concluding, “We are regrettably compelled to call on BOEM to reject Hecate’s unsolicited request for [Wind Energy Area] D to be considered for leasing and development due, among other reasons, to an unacceptably high degree of conflict with shrimp fishing operations.”

SSA then enumerated three concerns, which include fragile wind turbines breaking up into the environment after a level 5 hurricane, a “lack of sufficient scientific research to correctly understand a range of potentially irreversible ecological impacts of offshore wind energy development and operations,” and concerns about turbines disturbing marine radar.

SSA explained its concern in a previous email exchange with The Dallas Express.

“SSA collaborates constructively with BOEM and [National Centers for Coastal Science] to deconflict offshore wind energy development in the Gulf with the shrimp industry, but the unsolicited Hecate project would rob the shrimp fleet of access to valuable fishing grounds at a time when the industry is facing an existential crisis due to shrimp imports,” said John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

Read the full article at The Dallas Express

Gulf Shrimpers Warn New Offshore Wind Interest off Texas, Louisiana Could Harm Industry

August 28, 2024 — An unsolicited proposal from Hecate Energy Gulf Wind for two commercial leases for wind energy development off the coast of Texas and/or Louisiana has raised significant new concerns for the U.S. shrimp industry, the Southern Shrimp Alliance said in a statement.

The Hecate proposal, which may potentially support hydrogen production, has the potential to close fishing grounds, interrupt maritime radar, and harm sensitive species and habitats for which shrimpers are held accountable under federal statutes, according to the SSA.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Texas one of several states included in critical sea turtle habitat proposal

July 31, 2023 — A new proposal aims to protect threatened and endangered sea turtles by preserving their habitat along critical areas of the U.S. coastline.

NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the plan mid-July, proposing 8,870 acres of coastline in California, Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina and Texas be conserved for green sea turtles basking, nesting, incubation, hatching and traveling to sea. The proposition also included the territories of American Samoa, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands; and the commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico.

Read the full article at KETK

Gulf shrimp landings data showing rebound in Louisiana and decline in Texas

March 15, 2023 — The Fishery Monitoring Branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center released preliminary shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic for November 2022.

As with the agency’s reporting since July of last year, the numbers released by NOAA include substantial revisions, with reporting for the years prior to 2022 reflecting final totals tabulated by the agency. Because NOAA’s reporting for November 2022 remains preliminary in nature, the Southern Shrimp Alliance presents this data in the historical context of the agency’s previously reported preliminary figures. This means that in the summary charts prepared by the Southern Shrimp Alliance, the historical figures for the month of November in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 do not correspond to the numbers now being reported by NOAA.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Gulf’s first two zones for offshore wind farms selected off Louisiana, Texas

November 1, 2022 — The federal government has selected the first two areas for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico, clearing the way for a process that could have windmills spinning over the waves near Louisiana by the decade’s end.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Monday finalized the boundaries for the two zones: a 174,000-acre area south of Lake Charles and a 508,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas.

The two areas have the potential to generate enough power for almost 3 million homes, according to BOEM. That’s enough electricity for the combined populations of Houston, New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The commercial leasing process for the two areas is expected to begin by the middle of next year. After a multi-year site assessment, survey process and environmental review, offshore wind developers could begin installing turbines before 2030.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, said BOEM’s site selection is an “important first step” toward a stronger economy and cleaner energy for the Gulf region.

“Offshore wind is a key component to achieving our nation’s clean energy goals to lower costs and cut pollution, while creating good jobs for Americans,” he said.

Read the full article at nola.com

Gulf of Mexico charter captains wade into red grouper court case

September 8, 2022 — Commercial fishermen who are challenging a major shift of Gulf of Mexico red grouper quotas to the recreational sector have drawn the surprising support of charter boat operators, who argue the revised quotas would hurt their businesses as well.

On its face, the decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to ratify the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s new allocation policy would give the charter fleet more fish too. But the change will bring other outcomes to hurt the charter sector, said captain Scott Hickman, operator of Circle H Outfitters and Charters in Galveston, Texas, and a board member of the Charter Fishermen’s Association.

“We’ve been down this road before,” said Hickman. “You set a precedent for taking quota from an accountable sector, and dropping it into a black hole.”

Announced by NMFS this spring, Amendment 53 to the Gulf reef fish plan would reduce the annual commercial allocation to 59.3 percent, down from 76 percent, and increase the recreational allocation from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.

The move is being challenged in federal district court by the Galveston, Texas-based Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders Alliance, the A.P. Bell Fish Company, of Cortez, Florida, and the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, a longliner group based in Madeira Beach, Florida.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Gulf oil industry embraces offshore wind — to a point

August 23, 2022 — The Gulf of Mexico offshore oil industry will be critical in helping its frequent nemesis President Joe Biden achieve one of his most obtainable climate ambitions: raising wind farms in the ocean.

Welders and machinists from Louisiana and Texas are building the nation’s first offshore wind supply vessels and turbine installation ships. Jack-up vessel crews helped plant the first of thousands of turbines in the Atlantic Ocean and hope to raise more. Oil companies, with their decades of experience launching projects at sea, are expected to be at the front of the line when the Interior Department conducts the first lease sale for wind in the Gulf of Mexico next year.

But locals in the ports across south Louisiana are quick to point out the region isn’t ready to ditch its rigs. If anything, the embrace of offshore wind showcases a Gulf oil sector that remains mostly confident in the face of the energy transition.

“When wind energy comes to Louisiana, I think Louisiana will open their arms and say, ‘Yeah, come on, let’s do it,’” said Tommy Brown with Aries Marine Corp., one of the oil services companies that supplied lift boats and operators that helped build the first offshore wind farm in the country in Rhode Island in 2015. “[But] people need to understand that, look, you can’t just flip a switch and go from oil and gas to renewables.”

That sentiment is common across the Gulf Coast. The region demonstrates perhaps more than anywhere else in the country the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry, even as the Biden administration tries to drive an energy transformation that includes a commitment to approve 16 offshore wind arrays by 2030 to help decarbonize the grid by 2035.

In Louisiana, offshore wind could provide new jobs for workers laid off by an oil sector that becomes more efficient through each price bust, and it is poised to inject adrenaline into the shipbuilding industry. Long term, wind may even become a strong, albeit smaller, industry with its own workforce of wind technicians and manufacturers along the Gulf Coast, pushing clean power onto the grid.

Read the full story at E&E News

Feds want to help build massive wind farm larger than the City of Houston off the coast of Galveston

July 25, 2022 — More than half a million acres of Gulf of Mexico waters some 24 miles off the coast of Galveston could be dotted by wind turbines after federal officials on Wednesday said they are considering leasing the area for energy projects.

The proposed “wind energy area” covers 546,645 acres — larger than the city of Houston — and could produce enough electricity to power about 2.3 million homes, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said.

A second proposal about 64 miles off the coast of Lake Charles, La., would cover 188,023 acres and could produce power for 799,000 homes, officials said.

The wind energy area proposal is still just a draft, the bureau said. Visitors to its website can comment on the plans, and the bureau will hold online public meetings Aug. 9 and 11 to discuss the proposals.

The announcement is part of a Biden administration initiative to help develop 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind generation by 2030, a jaw-dropping increase from the 42 megawatts of electricity produced by the only two offshore wind farms in operation nationwide. Those projects, off the coasts of Virginia and Rhode Island, are in state waters; there are no projects in federal waters.

Another 15 projects are in the permitting phase, and eight states have set goals to procure a combined 39,298 megawatts from offshore operations by 2040, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. One megawatt is enough to power about 200 homes on a hot summer day.

If the offshore wind power flows into Electric Reliability Council of Texas, it could help the grid meet the record-breaking and growing demand the nonprofit grid operator has seen in recent months. For a moment Wednesday afternoon, demand surpassed 80,000 megawatts for the first time.

Some state officials, including ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones and Gov. Greg Abbott, have blamed low output from the state’s onshore wind fleet for tight grid conditions this summer, although it has long been known that wind blows less on hot summer days and is usually strongest during winters and in the evenings. Offshore wind, however, performs much better during the middle of hot days.

Read the full article at the Houston Chronicle