Saving Seafood

Joe Biden’s call for more offshore wind turbines faces stiff headwind from Maine fishermen

May 3, 2021 — Last week, President Joe Biden told federal regulators that to combat global warming, they should speed up the deployment of offshore wind-energy turbines, with the goal of supplying enough to power 10 million homes by the end of this decade.

Maine wind power advocates said that ratifies their argument that the state must get into the game now or get left behind. But the White House directive is also amplifying fears among fishermen that they’re the ones who will be left behind.

Most offshore wind energy projects around the world are sited in relatively shallow waters, where their foundations can easily be driven into the ocean floor. But that won’t work so well off Maine, where the coastal shelf drops abruptly and the strongest, most consistent winds blow over waters that are more than 200 feet deep.

“We could not fix the turbines to the seabed,” said University of Maine engineering professor Habib Dagher, who has worked for more than a decade to design a system that would suit deeper waters.

Inspiration came, Dagher said, after a trip to Europe, where turbine platforms fixed to the seabed are common.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAINE: Mitchell Center hosts talk about alternative seafood networks and fishing community resilience April 19

April 9, 2021 — The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine will host a talk about how alternative seafood networks can support resilient fishing communities from 3–4 p.m. on Monday, April 19.

Global seafood trade is at an all-time high, with an estimated 36 percent of seafood worldwide traded across international borders at a value of $148 billion. In the U.S., 71 percent of the seafood consumed is imported. The benefits of this trade, however, are not evenly distributed and often disadvantage rural communities, small- and mid-sized harvesters and low-income nations.

In this talk, “A Fishy Tail About Our Food System,” Joshua Stoll will describe the recent emergence of alternative seafood networks in North America and their role in supporting resilient fishing communities, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also discuss ongoing work to better integrate seafood into local food systems.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

International study shows alternative seafood networks provided resiliency during pandemic

April 1, 2021 — Local alternative seafood networks (ASNs) in the United States and Canada, often considered niche segments, experienced unprecedented growth in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic while the broader seafood system faltered, highlighting the need for greater functional diversity in supply chains, according to a new international study led by the University of Maine.

The spike in demand reflected a temporary relocalization phenomenon that can occur during periods of systemic shock—an inverse yet complementary relationship between global and local seafood systems that contributes to the resilience of regional food systems, according to the research team, which published its findings in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

The globalization of seafood has made food systems more vulnerable to systemic shocks, which can impact those dependent on seafood for sustenance and employment, according to the research team, led by Joshua Stoll, assistant professor of marine policy at the University of Maine.

Policy changes and greater investments in data collection and infrastructure are needed to support ASN development, increase functional diversity in supply chains, and bolster the resilience and sustainability of regional food systems and the global seafood trade, according to the researchers.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Maine fishermen demonstrate against offshore wind plan

March 24, 2021 — From afar it looked like a flag-waving boat parade, but an offshore procession Sunday of fishing vessels off the mid-Maine coast was a protest against plans for an undersea power cable and offshore wind turbine.

Organized by captains on short notice, the demonstration involved more than 80 boats trailing the route of a proposed export cable from a floating turbine site south of Monhegan Island to South Boothbay.

The 12-megawatt project by New England Aqua Ventus and the University of Maine would be a demonstration project for the feasibility of floating turbine technology – which would be necessary for developing wind power in the deepwater Gulf of Maine.

Fishing advocates contend the developers need to be more transparent in planning, but protesters said there are immediate issues with gear conflicts.

“The boat hasn’t been staying in the survey route, and there’s been some issues with gear loss,” Dustin Delano, a Friendship lobsterman and and organizer, told the Portland Press Herald.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MAINE: Lobstermen Circle Survey Vessel As Wind Protests Escalate

March 24, 2021 — Protests over wind energy development off the coast of Maine changed course today. Several fishing boats reportedly circled a survey vessel off Monhegan Island, and federal and state law enforcement responded.

Lobsterman Larry Reed posted video on Facebook Monday morning of the Go Liberty, a 150-foot survey vessel, as it appeared to draw near lobster buoys in the water.

“He’s gonna tow right though that lobster gear with no concern. He’s got gear out towing, no concern whatsoever for our livelihoods,” Reed said in the video.

The U.S. Coast Guard says it sent boats from its Boothbay Harbor station to assist the state Marine Patrol on the scene, which is in state-administered waters. Company officials say the survey vessel was forced to stop operations to ensure safety. Fishermen say that Coast Guard and Marine Patrol boats monitored the situation, and by afternoon the vessel continued its work.

The flashpoint is a single-turbine, floating platform wind project under development by New England Aqua Ventus, in a collaboration between private industry and the University of Maine. The Go Liberty was contracted to survey potential routes for an electricity cable between the turbine and the coast.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Wind developer accuses fishing boats of disrupting Maine offshore survey

March 23, 2021 — The seabed survey for a cable that would connect the planned offshore wind turbine near Monhegan Island to the mainland was disrupted Monday morning by three fishing boats that circled the survey vessel, according to New England Aqua Ventus, the project’s developer.

The action led the crew of the 144-foot R/V Go Liberty to suspend operations for an unspecified period, New England Aqua Ventus said.

“It was creating an unsafe situation until it’s resolved,” Dave Wilby, a project spokesman, told the Portland Press Herald.

The incident follows a protest Sunday by more than 80 lobster boats that lined up between Monhegan and Boothbay Harbor to call attention to their concerns about potential wind power development off the Maine coast.

Lobstermen fear that the ongoing survey project and the test turbine that would follow it will disrupt fisheries and undermine a traditional industry that is a vital economic engine for coastal Maine. But the project also is critical to Maine’s ambitions of jump-starting a new clean-energy sector.

After years of planning, a collaboration between the University of Maine and New England Aqua Ventus would link a turbine south of Monhegan to the mainland power grid in South Boothbay via a 23-mile underwater cable. The 12-megawatt test turbine would be the first commercial-scale project in the nation and help demonstrate the viability of floating offshore wind energy.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine joins national offshore wind research consortium

March 1, 2021 — Maine has joined the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium, a public-private partnership that could expand the state’s access to research and resources for its offshore wind program.

“Through the consortium, Maine has the opportunity to learn and advance technologies alongside a variety of others to guide offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine,” Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office, said in a news release Thursday. “Access to more knowledge, data and research from around the country will inform our approach to offshore wind and benefit Maine’s people, communities and economy.”

Maine’s membership in the consortium includes the Governor’s Energy Office and the University of Maine, a center of technology and innovation in floating offshore wind. The nonprofit consortium, established in 2018, works to advance offshore wind technology in the United States through cost-effective and responsible development to maximize economic benefits.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MAINE: New England Aqua Ventus moving forward with turbine

February 23, 2021 — New England Aqua Ventus (NEAV), formerly known as Maine Aqua Ventus, will soon begin ramping up efforts to put a single 10-12 megawatt turbine about two miles south of Monhegan Island. The project seeks to lay over 20 miles of cable several feet under the ocean floor from East Boothbay shores to the site.

The floating semisubmersible hull is a University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center design patented as VolturnUS. The UMaine-based researchers and engineers constructed and ran a 1:8, one-to-eight, version of a six megawatt turbine off the coast of Castine.

The project scored $39.9 million in U.S. Department of Energy research and development funds beating out 70 other public and private projects; however, the project cost, about $100 million, and other snags along the way kept the project relatively dormant until Gov. Janet Mills signed a law in November 2019 directing Maine Public Utilities Commission to approve the project’s contract. This paved the way for Aqua Ventus to sign a 20-year power-purchase agreement at above-market rates with Central Maine Power.

When the project rebranded in August 2020 as NEAV, partnering UMaine with Mitsubishi subsidiary Diamond Offshore Wind and German utilities giant RWE Renewables, the two-turbine project morphed into a singular larger one. Since then, NEAV has waited for the COVID-19 pandemic to quiet down before attacking the project in earnest and connecting with the coastal and fishing communities.

Read the full story at The Boothbay Register

Lobster research explores ocean warming effects

February 22, 2021 — A team of researchers from the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center in Walpole and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay and the Maine Department of Marine Resources in West Boothbay Harbor recently published their research on the effects of ocean warming and acidification on gene expression in the earliest life stages of the American lobster.

The work was published in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution with collaborators from the University of Prince Edward Island and Dalhousie University in Canada.

The team’s experiments examined the gene regulatory response of post-larval lobsters to the separate and combined effects of warming and acidification anticipated by the end of the 21st century. They found that genes regulating a range of physiological functions, from those controlling shell formation to the immune response, are either up- or down-regulated. Importantly, they observed that the two stressors combined induced a greater gene regulatory response than either stressor alone.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Entrepreneurs are finding new ways to use fish waste at a Maine co-working space

February 10, 2021 — Patrick Breeding and his partner developed a cream to fight dry skin from lobster waste out of necessity.

He and girlfriend Amber Boutiette were bioengineering graduate students at the University of Maine studying ways to use lobster byproducts, the parts that are tossed away. At the same time Boutiette was unable to find a product that relieved her eczema, a condition that makes skin red and itchy.

The duo discovered a protein in a lobster circulatory fluid that helps the crustacean heal wounds, developed the cream and last November formed Marin Skincare to sell it. The initial batch of the cream sold out in two months, Breeding said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News