Saving Seafood

Federal regulators eliminate Gulf of Maine wind power zone

July 31, 2025 — The Trump administration has erased all wind energy areas in federal waters, including two million acres in the Gulf of Maine.

The zones were developed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to offer wind power leases to energy developers.

Amber Hewett director of offshore wind energy at the National Wildlife Foundation said removing the areas is a follow up to the administration’s earlier order to stop all wind power lease sales.

“The change here is that now, when a new administration comes in, those areas won’t be ready and waiting. They have been deleted, and the process will need to start again at the beginning,” Hewett said.

Establishing the areas took years of consultation with fisheries, coastal communities, shipping companies, tribes, environmental groups and other interests.

Through those discussions regulators set aside areas that were the least disruptive, Hewett said.

Read the full article at Maine Public

ALASKA: Trump’s EPA reaffirms Biden-era Pebble Mine veto

July 25, 2025 — The Environmental Protection Agency is sticking with its veto of the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwest Alaska.

Northern Dynasty, the parent company behind the Pebble project, is still suing to get the veto overturned. A document filed in that lawsuit early this month said the company and the EPA were in settlement talks, and that the Trump administration said it was open to reconsidering the Biden-era veto on the controversial mining project.

But on July 17, attorneys in the case filed another document to update the judge. It says that negotiations between the company and the EPA did not reach a resolution, and that the Trump administration will continue to back the veto.

Read the full article at KDLG

ALASKA: Mine developer and EPA fail to reach agreement over Pebble copper and gold project

July 22, 2025 — A possible settlement agreement between the Trump administration and the Pebble copper and gold prospect in Southwest Alaska did not pan out, according to a recent filing in a federal court by Pebble Limited Partnership.

That means the legal case brought by Pebble against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues. Pebble is seeking to overturn the unusual 2023 decision by the agency, known as a veto, that stopped the project.

“Those discussions were productive but the parties did not reach a negotiated resolution,” said the status report from Pebble, filed Thursday.

Earlier this month, Northern Journal reported that EPA was negotiating a deal that could have ended the lawsuit between Pebble’s owner company and the federal agency.

Conservation groups characterized the lack of a settlement as a sign that the administration of President Donald Trump is standing by the agency’s decision, which was made under former President Joe Biden.

Pebble last week said in a statement that with no settlement reached, it is asking the court to set a briefing schedule for a summary judgment to have the EPA decision quickly withdrawn.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Trump’s proposed NOAA cuts meet Senate appropriators’ opposition

July 16, 2025 — Members of Congress are expressing renewed support for the nation’s weather forecasting system after deadly flooding in Texas and elsewhere put the focus on cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration proposed cutting NOAA’s fiscal 2026 budget to $4.5 billion — a 27 percent, nearly $1.7 billion reduction from the estimated fiscal 2025 spending.

But Senate appropriators from both parties highlighted the importance of NOAA, and particularly the National Weather Service housed within it, in a meeting last week.

Read the full article at Roll Call

Seafood workers, supporters rally at Fulton market against Empire Wind

July 16, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative hosted a July 15 rally at its Hunts Point facility in the Bronx to protest the Empire Wind energy project, now under construction around traditional fishing grounds off New York.

“Offshore wind is not a supplement to our industry, it is a direct replacement,” Nicole Ackerina, CEO of the Fulton cooperative, said in a joint statement after the rally with union workers, commercial fishermen from New York and New Jersey, and coastal advocates.

“These projects will eliminate access to vital fishing grounds, destabilize our seafood infrastructure, and trade American jobs for short-term foreign-backed construction contracts.”

Fulton employs 1,200 full-time workers, including 500 Bronx residents, most of them union members, said Ackerina.

“Our industry feeds America. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported that in 2022, New York’s seafood industry supported nearly 70,000 jobs and over $9.2 billion in sales. New Jersey supported more than 72,000 jobs and $12.9 billion in sales. This is not expendable.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Trump’s EPA flags a problem with offshore wind permit issued by Maryland

July 16, 2025 — Federal officials are calling on the state to reissue a permit for a wind farm planned off the Ocean City coast, to correct what they say is an error in the original document.

In a July 7 letter to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took issue with the process that MDE laid out to appeal the final construction permit awarded to US Wind.

The state said any challenge to the state permit would have to go through state courts, but EPA Region 3 Administrator Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey said that any appeal would have to be filed with the clerk of the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.

“Failure to rectify this error could result in invalidation of the permit on appeal and confusion among relevant stakeholders with respect to where to bring such an appeal,” Blarcom-Lackey wrote.

MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson said in a statement that the agency is reviewing Blarcom-Lackey’s letter and is “committed to ensuring all our permit processes are transparent and in accordance with the law.” An official with US Wind said the company is “confident that all of our project’s permits were validly issued.”

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

NEW YORK: Long Island fishermen fight to stop offshore wind farm

July 16, 2025 — The head of the Fulton Fish Market Cooperative rallied alongside local fishermen and joined a decade-long fight to stop an offshore wind farm now under construction off Long Island’s coast.

Construction on the wind project began in April and was soon halted by a Trump Administration stop-work order. That order was lifted in May, and the project continues despite the ongoing lawsuit from the fishing industry.

Read the full article at Pix 11

US delays rule on Gulf of Mexico whale protections by two years

July 15, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will delay by two years a final rule designating protections for the endangered Rice’s whale in the oil and gas drilling region of the Gulf of Mexico, according to an agreement with environmental groups filed in a federal court.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service agreed with green group Natural Resources Defense Council to finalize by July 15, 2027 the geographic area deemed critical for the Rice’s whale survival. The previous deadline had been Tuesday, July 15, of this year.

The agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 3 was seen by Reuters on Monday.

Read the full article at Reuters

In court filing, Trump administration hints at a lifeline for embattled Pebble project

July 14, 2025 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took a rare step under former President Joe Biden to block development of the Pebble mine, Alaska’s largest known copper and gold deposit, which for years has fueled controversy over its potential impacts on one of the world’s largest salmon runs.

Now, under President Donald Trump, the agency is giving its past Pebble decisions another look and negotiating a deal that could end a lawsuit filed by Pebble’s developer — an announcement that’s boosted the company’s stock price this week.

Administration officials “have been actively considering the agency decisions” and are “open to reconsideration,” according to a recent court filing submitted by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers. The three-page document does not elaborate, though it references the past decision by the EPA and a separate decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Pebble a key permit.

Read the full article at the Northern Journal

MASSACHSUETTS: Immigration raids have spread anxiety for some in New Bedford fishing industry: ‘We don’t know what’s gonna happen’

July 9, 2025 — Hector Grave has worked in the seafood business since he came to this historic fishing city from a small town in Guatemala in the late 1990s.

He worked at fish houses, cutting scallops and shrimp, cleaning fish that came in from nearby waters. Later, a friend introduced him to net making, and he felt it was like solving a puzzle.

He found a job making fishing nets for local companies, typically stitching and braiding the nets together and adding floats, and then founded his own net company in 2012, which now includes a buoy business.

Grave is part of a long line of immigrants who help sustain the fishing industry in New Bedford, the most valuable fishing port in the country. But immigration crackdowns by the Trump administration across New England and in New Bedford, where about a fifth of the city’s residents are foreign born, have spread anxiety in recent months. Some workers are limiting their time outside of their homes and work to avoid potential ICE activity. Many industry leaders said they work hard to ensure they are hiring documented immigrants, but they also hope the Trump administration will take steps to give foreign-born workers pathways to continue earning a living in the sector.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe