Saving Seafood

In latest anti-wind action, Trump administration moves to revoke SouthCoast Wind permit

September 22, 2025 — In another attack on offshore wind, the Trump administration is looking to reconsider a key permit for SouthCoast Wind, a planned 141-turbine project off the Massachusetts coast.

The move comes a week after it revoked the same permit for a proposed wind farm near Maryland, and represents the latest escalation in the administration’s attempt to kneecap the offshore wind industry. Already, the multi-agency effort has resulted in frozen federal permits, restrictions on where wind farms can be built, and new reviews of existing regulations to make sure they they “align with America’s energy priorities under President Donald J. Trump.”

On Thursday, the government filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to take back its approval of the SouthCoast Wind project’s “construction and operations plan,” or COP. The COP is the last major federal permit an offshore wind project needs before it can start putting turbines in the water.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had approved SouthCoast’s COP on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before President Trump’s second term began.

“Based on its review to date, BOEM has determined that the COP approval may not have fully complied with the law regulating the use of federal waters over the outer continental shelf,” the government wrote. “That is reason enough to grant a remand.”

In a statement, SouthCoast Wind said the company “intends to vigorously defend our permits in federal court.”

Read the full article at Rhode Island PBS

Fishing council recommends rolling back fishing prohibitions in Pacific Ocean

September 18, 2025 — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council wants to undo fishing protections in the Pacific Ocean, which opponents say will hurt ocean ecosystems.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in April to review regulations in U.S. marine monuments in an effort to promote domestic fishing.

As part of that review, WESPAC was asked to make recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce on what to do within Pacific monuments.

On Tuesday the council voted to endorse a July letter it drafted recommending the allowance of commercial fishing in three Pacific monuments — the Mariana Trench, Rose Atoll and Pāpahānaumokuākea marine national monuments.

The council also voted separately to repeal fishing prohibitions in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, formerly known as the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

Read the full article at Hawaii Public Radio

CALIFORNIA: California isn’t backing down on offshore wind power despite Trump cancellation

September 18, 2025 — California’s ambitious plan to generate clean electricity from offshore wind suffered a considerable blow recently when the Trump administration canceled nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for the state’s largest project. But industry insiders, experts and officials told The Times they aren’t slowing the pursuit of this up-and-coming technology.

The Golden State last year approved a landmark plan for developing 25 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2045. Five ocean leases have already been granted to energy companies off the coast of Humboldt and Morro Bay, with the potential to produce up to 10 gigawatts of electricity.

The plan eventually could see 1,600 turbines as tall as the Eiffel Tower in federal waters 20 to 50 miles offshore, producing enough electricity for 25 million homes. It is a climate solution and key component of the state’s goal of reaching 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.

Floating offshore wind is relatively new compared with fixed offshore wind, which involves attaching turbines directly to the sea floor. Most offshore wind around the world so far is fixed, but California has been exploring floating turbines because the Pacific Ocean is so deep. The floating technology has been successfully deployed in Norway, France, Portugal and China.

Federal officials last year said California’s offshore wind efforts would help combat climate change, lower consumer costs and create jobs. But the Trump administration has an aversion to climate efforts and to wind power in particular: On his first day in office, the president issued a memorandum halting offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf and ordered officials to review all existing leases to look for legal grounds for termination.

Read the full article at LA Times

The Feds Had Questions. Court Filings Claim Revolution Wind Developers Didn’t Answer Them

September 17, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s opposition to offshore wind crystallized long before he won re-election. But the justification for the administration’s abrupt halt to the Revolution Wind project on Aug. 22 has remained murky.

Until now.

New court filings from the U.S. Department of Justice reveal the rationale behind the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) decision to shut down the 65-turbine project that was already 80% finished: Developers allegedly failed to turn in required plans on how the project off Rhode Island’s coastline would affect national ocean research and defense work.

“As of the date of this Declaration, still DOI not received any information that these requirements have been satisfied and given how long they remain pending, the department has concerns as to whether they will ever be met,” Adam Suess, acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the Interior Department, wrote in a Sept. 12 affidavit.

Suess’ written testimony counters the criticism from state officials and project developers accusing the Trump administration of arbitrary and unlawful abuses of power in a pair of federal lawsuits filed Sept. 4.

Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, co-developers of the $5 billion wind project, filed their lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and other federal agencies and directors in D.C., while attorneys general in Rhode Island and Connecticut took their legal challenge to Rhode Island federal court. The two southern New England states were under contracts to buy electricity from the 704-megawatt project starting next year. Now in limbo, thousands of labor jobs are on the line, along with both states’ abilities to meet their climate change mandates and the reliability of the regional electric grid.

Read the full article at Rhode Island PBS

Trump admin tries to sink Maryland’s first offshore wind project

September 17, 2025 — Maryland’s first offshore wind farm could have broken ground next year. But now the 114-turbine renewable energy project is all but doomed following the Trump administration’s most recent move in a long line of attacks on the industry.

In a motion filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in Maryland, the Interior Department asked a judge to cancel approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which was authorized in the final weeks of the Biden administration. The wind farm was expected to power over 718,000 homes in a Democrat-led state facing rocketing energy demands.

Officials claim that the agency’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management made an ​“error” when assessing the turbines’ potential impact on other activities — like search-and-rescue operations and fishing — within the 80,000-acre swath of ocean where the wind farm would be located.

The project is over a decade in the making, with developer US Wind purchasing the lease in 2014. But after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July and greatly shortened the duration of the wind energy tax credit, Maryland’s first offshore wind farm already seemed impossible to pull off — at least economically.

Harrison Sholler, an offshore wind analyst with BloombergNEF, told Canary Media in July that with the tax credits sunsetting at a much earlier date, the Maryland project would likely no longer be able to offset 30% of its costs. The original rule for receiving the incentives required construction to start by 2033 or potentially even later, but the new law stipulates that wind farms must be ​“placed in service” by the end of 2027 or begin construction by July 4, 2026, to qualify.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Opinion: Embarking on an America-first seafood strategy in Alaska

September 16, 2025 — In 1787, Alexander Hamilton stressed the need for a united national effort to protect America’s ocean resources from stagnation and unfair foreign trade practices. Absent vigorous federal action to free our fisheries from barriers to growth and trade, “that unequalled spirit of enterprise, which signalises the genius of the American Merchants and Navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost.”

Since Hamilton wrote those words, Alaska became first a territory, then the 49th state in the Union, cementing itself as a linchpin of the nation’s food supply, economy and national security.

Alaska has the largest federal fisheries in the nation—roughly 60% of America’s harvest by volume. The Alaska seafood industry produces roughly $6 billion in economic output for the state and employs 48,000 Alaskans.

In addition to feeding our own citizens, fisheries products are among the top three U.S. food, agriculture and related product export categories, and there is soaring global demand for these high-quality, high-value commodities.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

US asks federal court to cancel permit for Maryland offshore wind farm

September 15, 2025 —  The Trump administration asked a federal judge to cancel the 2024 approval of a wind farm off the coast of Maryland, saying former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had underestimated threats it would cause to search and rescue operations and commercial fisheries, according to court documents filed on Friday.

If approved by the court, the motion would invalidate a years-long federal process that permitted US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project. The facility was expected to generate enough electricity to power 718,000 homes at a time of soaring U.S. demand.

Read the full article at Reuters

Orsted Sues Over Stop-Work Order

September 12, 2025 — Revolution Wind, a wind farm under construction in federal waters on the outer continental shelf, has sued the Trump administration following the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s August issuance of a stop-work order, with the 65-turbine installation already 80-percent complete.

The stop-work order was one of multiple actions apparently aimed at killing a nascent domestic offshore wind industry. In July, the federal Interior Department announced the end of what it called “preferential treatment for unreliable, subsidy-dependent wind and solar energy,” and in August launched investigations into bird deaths caused by wind farms. BOEM rescinded regulations outlining renewable energy lease sales early last month.

Read the full article at The East Hampton Star

Could Revolution Wind get back to work? Burgum comments suggest anything is possible.

September 11, 2025 — A week after Gov. Dan McKee asked to meet with President Donald Trump over the administration’s halt to the Revolution Wind project, he’s still waiting for an answer.

But U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is suggesting the paused project might not be dead in the water after all. In an interview on CNBC Wednesday, Burgum, whose office oversees federal permits for offshore wind projects, indicated the administration was open to letting work resume on the 65-turbine project.

Read the full article at Yahoo News!