Saving Seafood

Coast Guard Rescuers test skills on 5-turbine wind farm at Block Island

September 3, 2019 — Offshore rescuers are sharpening their skills at and near the Block Island Wind Farm, in what are early preparations for the Atlantic Coast’s nascent offshore wind industry.

But a Rhode Island commercial fishing group has said practicing on five turbines, all in a row, can’t be considered a real test for what is expected to be hundreds of wind turbines in grid patterns offshore south of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the coming decade.

“It’s not really a farm,” said Richard Fuka of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance.

The U.S. Coast Guard has completed a case study on the Jan. 1 sinking of the F/V Mistress 3 or 4 miles from the Block Island wind farm to determine if the presence of the five turbines had any impact on the agency’s search and rescue operation. The results of the study are expected to be shared with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the key federal permitting agency for the offshore wind industry. The study has not been released publicly yet.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Lack of life jackets leading factor in recreational boat mishaps

August 29, 2019 — The number of U.S. recreational boating accidents and fatalities decreased slightly in 2018, but the factors leading to boating casualties and deaths remains disturbingly the same.

On Tuesday, the Coast Guard released its report on 2018 recreational boating statistics that indicate the holy trinity of the factors involved in accidents, casualties and fatalities are lack of life jackets, operator inattention and the use of alcohol.

Let’s begin with life jackets.

According to the Coast Guard’s 2018 statistics, drowning was the cause of 77 percent of the 633 boating deaths in 2018 where the cause of death was identified. That represents a 1 percent increase from 2017.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Coast Guard on long patrol against illegal fishing in North Pacific

August 23, 2019 — A 50-year-old Coast Guard cutter is on the front line against illegal fishing on the high seas of the North Pacific, part of a growing international fight.

The cooperative effort targets uncontrolled distant-water fishing vessels, and tracks the business networks of carrier ships and fuel bunkering tankers that support them. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or IUU, operates outside the territorial waters jurisdiction of coastal nations.

But not beyond the reach of international law and cooperative regulation by fishing nations. In the North Pacific, that is what the North Pacific Fisheries Commission does.

The youngest of world’s ocean-spanning management groups, the NPFC only got started in 2015. It includes representation from Canada, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Chinese Taipei, the United States of America, and Vanuatu.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Ørsted hires Coast Guard waterways chief

August 23, 2019 — The former Coast Guard waterways management chief for New England has joined offshore wind energy company Ørsted, as the emerging U.S. industry comes to grips with pushback from commercial fishermen and other interests.

Ed LeBlanc, a former Coast Guard officer and most recently chief of the Waterways Management Division for Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England, will be manager of marine affairs for Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind, the Denmark-based energy company’s American division.

In his last position of 16 years with the Coast Guard First District, LeBlanc was in the forefront of planning to how the newly arriving offshore wind industry could coexist with commercial fishing and maritime transportation traffic in the Northeast. An element of that will be safe vessel transit lanes through planned wind turbine arrays off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

US Regulators Gear Up For Offshore Wind Project Oversight

August 20, 2019 — For the first time in more than a decade the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has revised its guidelines for assessing the effects of offshore wind projects on commercial shipping, an indication that such projects are gaining momentum as a renewable energy option.

The new guidance, made public earlier this month, identifies navigational safety information the agency will consider when reviewing permit applications to build and operate an Offshore Renewable Energy Installation, including wind farms. It updates and replaces guidelines originally issued in 2007.

The USCG advises the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, part of the U.S. Department of Interior, on offshore leases, and can recommend that project developers conduct a Navigation Safety Risk Assessment, which includes an evaluation of marine traffic information based on vessel movement data.

Read the full story at The Morning Star

Longtime Pacific Seafood Processors Association President Glenn Reed retiring, with no regrets

July 24, 2019 — Glenn Reed is retiring after more than 20 years as president of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, a nonprofit trade association representing seafood processing companies.

Reed’s retirement will become effective at the end of 2019, with the PSPA announcing on 22 July that Christopher Barrows, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, will become the organization’s new president beginning 15 August.

“I am honored to be selected by PSPA to carry forward these important messages. I enjoyed my time in the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling the waters off Alaska and in the North Pacific Ocean as well as living in Juneau and traveling throughout Alaska to coordinate Coast Guard activities and develop lasting partnerships,” Barrows said in a press release. “I look forward to the opportunity to address future challenges facing the industry as well as to help ensure the continued sustainable management of fisheries resources.”

Barrows represented the United States Coast Guard as part of the North Pacific Anadromous Fisheries Commission, the International Pacific Halibut Commission, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission, the U.S.-Russia Intergovernmental Consultative Committee on Fisheries, the U.S.-Canada Bilateral meetings on Ocean and Fisheries, the United Nations’ Consultative Process on the Oceans and the Law of the Sea, and in meetings of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Barrows has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a master’s degree in marine affairs from the University of Rhode Island. Once he assumes the presidency, he will be based in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

‘Derelict vessel’ law snags Alaska fishermen

June 26, 2019 — A well-intended new Alaska law has gone awry from a botched rollout that has turned thousands of Alaskan fishing vessel, tender, barge and sport fish operators into lawbreakers.

Since the start of 2019, all vessels over 24 feet are required to be registered with the state at a Department of Motor Vehicles office. Previously, vessels that were documented with the Coast Guard were not required to also register with the state. The state registration costs $24 and is good for three years.

“You need to get down to the DMV whether you’re documented or not,” explained Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska.  “If you’re documented you have to register, and if you’re not documented, you have to register and get a title.”

The new rule stems from Senate Bill 92, the Derelict Vessels Act introduced last year by Sen. Peter Micciche (R-Soldotna) and passed by the Legislature. It is intended to help harbormasters and others track down owners of abandoned vessels.

But virtually no mariners know about the new registration requirement.

“We found out about it from a DMV personnel in Haines who told one of our gillnetters, and he told me. And we both called the troopers and they didn’t know anything about it,” said fisherman Max Worhatch of Petersburg. “Later they got back to us and said it was indeed the law.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Coast Guard wages battle against illegal fishing boats

May 29, 2019 —  In the sun-blasted, wind-riven waters between the South Padre Island jetties and the mouth of the Rio Grande, a different kind of border crossing crisis is playing out.

One side has spotter aircraft, radar and fully crewed patrol craft loaded with the latest technology. The other employs simple 20- to 30-foot boats with outboard motors, capitalizing on speed and a canny sense for beating a tactical retreat.

For Mexican lancha crews fishing illegally in the waters of the United States, low-tech often proves good enough.

In the past five years, U.S. Coast Guard interceptions (visual sighting at sea or by air) and interdictions (stop and seizure) are up. Last year, Coast Guard crews seized 60 vessels which were fishing illegally in U.S. waters.

This year, they’ve already boarded and taken 58.

Read the full story at The Brownsville Herald

Coast Guard study of travel routes underway

March 29, 2019 — The Coast Guard has begun a study of vessel traffic in and around the seven offshore energy lease areas south of the Islands to determine if any new vessel travel routes are necessary to improve navigational safety, according to Tuesday’s notice in the Federal Register.

“Vineyard Wind appreciates the Coast Guard’s efforts to address the important question of transit lanes through the formal PARS process,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. “The study’s future results will provide important information for orderly development of the New England offshore wind area in a way that ensures safe navigation for all mariners.”

While Vineyard Wind is the only leaseholder south of the Islands with a contract to sell electricity from what is expected to be an 84-turbine wind farm, there potentially will be several distinct wind farm installations, across what is close to 1 million acres, each with a unique number of turbines, turbine sizes and turbine layout.

Last year, two competing proposals for navigation routes were announced by stakeholders following forums held in southeastern New England. Vessels that could be affected might be traveling between Georges Bank and and New Bedford, Point Judith, Rhode Island, or Montauk, New York, according to the Federal Register notice.

A vessel transit layout announced in September was from a Massachusetts state government-organized fisheries working group on offshore wind, with one east-west route, one north-south route and one diagonal route. But in early December, Rhode Island commercial fishermen said they needed wider corridors, in the range of 4-miles wide, to safely maneuver their vessels.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Coast Guard medevacs fisherman

March 19, 2019 — The Coast Guard said it medevaced a sick fisherman Sunday from a boat 50 miles off Gloucester and took him to the hospital.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew from Air Station Cape Cod picked up the 40-year-old ill fisherman from the fishing vessel America, approximately 50 miles east of Gloucester on Sunday.

The aircrew brought the man to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times