Saving Seafood

How will offshore wind farms affect Gulf of Mexico fishing? Federal regulators want to know

December 6, 2021 — With the development of offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico likely within a few years, federal regulators are beginning to assess how wind farms will affect commercial and recreational fisheries.

On Dec. 15, agencies that regulate offshore energy and fisheries will hold a workshop for the Gulf’s fishers. The input they gather will help guide the planning and permitting of wind farm lease areas, and potentially lead to mitigation for fishers affected by turbines, transmission lines and related infrastructure.

East Coast fishers are concerned that an expected boom in wind farm construction off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia will crowd them out and make fishing more dangerous. The country’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project built in Rhode Island in 2016, was small enough that it didn’t get in the way of fishing boats, but its transmission lines to the shore have snagged many fishing nets.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

Right whale coalition calls for moratorium on wind turbines to protect endangered species

November 26, 2021 — A local citizens group has announced the creation of the Save Right Whales Coalition, which is determined to stop offshore wind turbine projects that members say could harm whales.

“Any species whose numbers are this low requires that we not take any additional action that could harm these whales,” political and environmental author and activist Michael Shellenberger said of the endangered North Atlantic right whales. “Particularly given that we have an abundance of nuclear and natural gas resources that would provide a sufficient alternative to these large industrial wind turbines.”

During a Zoom teleconference last week, he said the coalition is composed of members from organizations that include Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, the national Wildlife Energy & Community Coalition, and California-based Environmental Progress (for which Shellenberger is founder and president).

The Save Right Whales Coalition is seeking a moratorium on all offshore wind projects “until further scientific research can be conducted” on their impact on the North Atlantic right whale population, Shellenberger said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

BOEM approves South Fork Wind ‘habitat alternative’ plan

November 26, 2021 — The South Fork Wind project design will be reduced from 15 turbines to 12 under a modified construction and operations plan, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management confirmed in a record of decision Wednesday.

The agency adopted a “habitat alternative” turbine layout as its preferred plan out of the environmental impact study for the project, planned for 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y., by wind developers Ørsted and Eversource.

Originally leased by Rhode Island wind power pioneers Deepwater Wind – the startup later absorbed by Ørsted – the South Fork tract is about 19 miles southeast of Deepwater Wind’s five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm, the first U.S. offshore commercial wind installation.

On track to start construction in January 2022, South Fork with about 130 MW capacity would follow the 800 MW Vineyard Wind project underway off southern Massachusetts.

Named for the southeast corner of Long Island, the South Fork project is touted as one answer to the island’s growing power supply needs and New York State’s goal of 9,000 MW or renewable energy.

Skeptics dispute the project’s real power potential, and New York and Rhode Island commercial fishermen are fighting against the disruption looming for their industry.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Standoff at sea sours fishermen, US Wind relations

November 15, 2021 — After an on-the-water standoff between commercial fisherman Jimmy Hahn  and a US Wind survey boat, Rep. Andy Harris met with area fisherman to discuss encroachment into fishing areas.

The closed meeting Wednesday, also attended by state Sen. Mary Beth Carozza, R-38-Worcester, included more than 12 fishermen primarily from Ocean City who discussed survey ships damaging potentially lucrative fishing pots in allowed fishing areas.

“On Nov. 1 at approximately 3 p.m., we were on on our way to set more conch pots and I noticed a US Wind survey boat was tearing through my gear,” Hahn said. “I contacted them on a radio channel, as well as our fishing liaison from US Wind, and we had a conversations for 30 minutes and they would not stop going through my gear.”

What followed was Hahn placing his ship between his pots and the much larger boat. Eventually, the survey ship begged off.

Read the full story at the Salisbury Daily Times

 

Floating Wind Farms are About to Transform the Oceans

November 5, 2021 — Alla Weinstein did not invent the floating wind turbine. This is something she wanted to make clear early in our Zoom call, as if she were worried I’d give her too much credit. “I don’t need to invent. There are plenty of inventions,” she said. “But a lot of inventions die on the grapevine if they aren’t carried through.” What Weinstein does is carry them through.

For that, she does want credit. When I asked if she’d put the idea of floating offshore wind generation in the minds of California’s energy commissioners, she bristled cheerfully. “I would put it more strongly than that,” she said, shaking her auburn curls. “I didn’t give anyone ideas. I basically told them, ‘This is what needs to be done.’” The state needed clean energy, she reasoned, and she knew a couple of inventors with the technology to produce it: a floating platform designed to support a wind turbine on the surface of just about any large water body in the world.

If you haven’t been following the tortured saga of offshore wind power—or even if you have—you may not recognize how completely floating offshore wind technology stands to alter the global energy landscape. Just 10 years ago, installing offshore wind in the Eastern Pacific Ocean was technologically impossible: Conventional wind turbines typically sit atop giant steel cylinders called “monopiles,” which have to be driven into the ocean floor and rarely sink deeper than 100 feet. Other structures, known as “four-legged jackets,” can go as deep as 200 feet. But the continental shelf off California breaks fast and steep, dropping to depths of more than 600 feet not far from shore. Floating platforms, meanwhile, can sit on the surface of oceans thousands of feet deep, and can be assembled onshore and towed to their various destinations—as far out as transmission cables buried in the seafloor can extend back to land.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

New Passive Acoustic Monitoring Framework to Help Safeguard Marine Resources During Offshore Wind Development

October 28, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have developed a new framework for monitoring underwater sounds. Published today in Frontiers in Marine Science, the guidelines are designed to help safeguard marine resources as wind energy development expands in U.S. waters.

The framework provides holistic recommendations for offshore wind stakeholders nationwide to effectively monitor and reduce the impact of wind energy projects on marine animals using passive acoustic monitoring.

Why is Passive Acoustic Monitoring Important?

Passive acoustic monitoring in aquatic environments refers to the use of underwater microphones to detect sounds from animals and the environment. These microphones can be deployed for months at a time, run non-stop, and gather data in difficult weather and light conditions. This makes them a great complement to more traditional survey methods. Scientists can also use groups of recorders to track animals as they move throughout an area.

For wind developers, passive acoustic monitoring is a valuable tool. They can use it to identify the animals in a project area and understand how a population is distributed and behaves. They can observe potential behavioral responses to construction activities and turbine operations. Monitoring systems can also be used to make real-time decisions like delaying construction or warning vessels to reduce their speed to protect nearby endangered whales and other animals.

Because of the critical information it provides, NOAA Fisheries and BOEM may require wind developers to use passive acoustic monitoring as part of project-specific permits and approvals. The data collected can be particularly useful in NOAA Fisheries’ work to safeguard protected species under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.

“Passive acoustic monitoring has become an effective and extensively used tool for evaluating the effects of human activities in marine environments,” said Sofie Van Parijs, passive acoustic program lead at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lead author of the paper. “As wind energy development expands in U.S. waters, this publication aims to address the need for recommendations and best practices to help industry develop robust and consistent passive acoustic mitigation plans and long-term baseline monitoring programs.”

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

Comments Sought on Offshore Wind Farms Proposed Off Jersey Shore

October 19, 2021 — The US. Department of the Interior is seeking comments for an environmental impact statement being developed by its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for two wind farms proposed off the coast of New Jersey that include an area off Long Beach Island. The public has until Nov. 1 to comment on possible disruptions to fishing, migrating whales, porpoises and sea turtles, bird and bat impacts and tourism.

Proposed by partners Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America, the projects would be located approximately 8.7 miles from the New Jersey shoreline at the closest point. BOEM is seeking public input to “identify issues and potential alternatives” for the preparation of an environmental impact statement for two Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind projects off New Jersey’s coast. BOEM will determine whether to approve, approve with modifications, or disapprove Atlantic Shores’ construction and operations plan.

Read the full story at The SandPaper

 

Energy Department announces $10.8M in funding to study impact of offshore wind on East Coast fisheries

October 15, 2021 — The Department of Energy has announced $10.8 million in funding to research the impact of offshore wind on East Coast fisheries and ocean ecosystems. The move is part of President Joe Biden’s plan to tackle climate change by making a big push for renewable energy. But the commercial fishing industry says plans to use hundreds of thousands of acres of ocean to develop wind power will impact the catch.

Clammers and scallop fishermen say they won’t be able to maneuver through the turbines, which would be spaced 1 nautical mile apart. They fear a shrinking patch of fishable ocean will lead to the collapse of the industry.

Some worry about the impact of construction on marine mammals, especially the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which currently has an estimated population of less than 400.

“Harnessing the incredible potential that exists within offshore wind energy is an essential piece of reaching a net-zero carbon future,” Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement. “In order for Americans living in coastal areas to see the benefits of offshore wind, we must ensure that it’s done with care for the surrounding ecosystem by coexisting with fisheries and marine life —and that’s exactly what this investment will do.”

Read the full story at WHYY

Interior to auction 7 new offshore wind leases

October 14, 2021 — Federal regulators will auction off as many as seven new offshore wind leases by 2025 in an attempt to broaden the industry’s geographic footprint and meet President Biden’s climate goals, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced this afternoon.

The plan is potentially significant. Biden has set a goal of installing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, but experts say the U.S. will have a hard time meeting that goal without opening new swaths of ocean to development. Haaland’s announcement, made at an industry conference in Boston, marks an attempt to do just that.

Developers are currently planning 16 projects along the East Coast from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Under Interior’s plan, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will for the first time auction off leases in the Gulf of Maine and the Gulf of Mexico and near California and Oregon.

Lease sales will also be held in areas where proposed wind farms are already moving forward, such as the New York Bight, south of Long Island, and in the mid-Atlantic.

Read the full story at E&E News

 

As turbines rise, small-scale fishermen have the most to lose

October 14, 2021 — Offshore wind is a critical component of President Biden’s climate strategy, but it has met fierce resistance from fishermen like Aripotch. They fear installing thousands of massive turbines in the ocean could displace them from their fishing grounds and sink their industry.

The conflict is a vivid illustration of the tradeoffs involved in confronting climate change.

Biden and other supporters say offshore wind can deliver a surge of clean electricity and slash greenhouse gas emissions. But many fishing captains worry the turbines could alter the ocean in unexpected and irreparable ways. Last month, a commercial fishing group filed a lawsuit challenging the federal permit issued to Vineyard Wind I, the country’s first planned development.

Efforts are being made to address those concerns. In New York, one company sat down with local fishermen to discuss turbine placement. Developers working off New England will space their turbines one nautical mile apart to ease navigation. In fact, federal regulators selected many wind development areas specifically because they were less popular with fishermen.

But fishermen say those concessions fall short. U.S. regulators plan to allow fishing inside wind developments, but many captains worry it’s only a matter of time before a boat wrecks on a turbine and they’re banned from wind areas. They also contend the government has underestimated the value of fishing grounds and plowed ahead with new projects.

The truth may lie somewhere in between.

“Many fishermen will not see a big impact, but fishermen who do may see a very large impact,” says Chris McGuire, director of the marine program of the Nature Conservancy’s Massachusetts chapter. “That’s a hard part about this. You hear disparate opinions. And I think this is one of those situations where they’re all true depending on where you sit.”

Read the full story at WBUR