September 12, 2022 — A federal judge has denied a request from fishing groups that sought to challenge new fishing rules designed to protect rare whales.
Judge rules against lobstermen, says federal rules protecting right whales don’t overreach
September 9, 2022 — A US District Court judge in Washington, D.C., handed a victory Thursday to environmental groups and rejected a challenge to federal rules to protect North Atlantic right whales that was brought by New England lobstermen, who argued the requirements go too far and are based on flawed data, court records show.
The ruling prompted sharp reactions from both sides of the issue.
Maine Governor Janet Mills, criticized the judge’s decision as being “so out of touch with reality.”
“The National Marine Fisheries Service has consistently interpreted the data in the most conservative way possible, without accounting for the impact of ship strikes on whales and whale entanglements in Canadian snow crab gear, putting all of the burden for right whale protection squarely on the shoulders of Maine’s lobster fishery,” Mills said in a statement.
“The good news today is that the court upheld the agency’s science,” Davenport said in an interview. “Of course, from the conservation point of view, the science has never really been in dispute. The question has been what’s the agency doing about the science. And our position has been that it’s not going far enough fast enough to meet the conservation crisis that the right whale is in.”
Lobstermen had argued that a report issued last year by the National Marine Fisheries Service that set new goals for reducing deaths of North Atlantic right whales “overstates the risks lobstering poses to the whale and consequently overregulates the industry,” according to court documents.
“Because [federal officials] overstated their industry’s risk to right whales, they contend, the Rule imposes some needless and draconian risk-reduction measures — e.g., restrictions on the number of vertical fishing lines in certain areas, seasonal closures, and the requirement that fishing lines contain weak links that whales can break free from,” Judge James E. Boasberg wrote.
Patent ruling delivers blow to GE’s wind turbine business — and to the nascent US offshore wind industry
September 9, 2022 — General Electric made a huge splash four years ago with plans to build what it called the Haliade-X, the most powerful wind-driven turbine to go up in the ocean at the time.
Taller than the Hancock tower. Each blade, roughly as long as a football field. Able to generate enough electricity for at least 6,000 homes. These goliaths would accelerate the adoption of offshore wind power and help Boston-based GE leapfrog its primary rivals in the quickly growing US market, Siemens Gamesa and Vestas. Then in 2020, GE outmaneuvered Vestas for the contract to supply the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, the Vineyard Wind project planned for waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.
However, these grand plans ran into significant turbulence in federal court in Boston on Wednesday, when US District Judge William Young blocked the sale of the Haliade-X in the United States. With only three major players here, taking GE’s modern offshore turbine off the market could complicate life in a big way for US wind-farm developers.
Young’s ruling was based on a jury verdict in June that found several elements of GE’s Haliade-X infringed on a patent held by Siemens Gamesa, a European company considered to be the global market leader in offshore wind. Young allowed Haliade-X turbines to be installed at Vineyard Wind and another wind farm off the New Jersey coast, because they are so far along in development, as long as GE pays royalties. But beyond those projects, the injunction would require GE to come up with a new design. That’s not something that happens overnight.
This decision is a setback for GE, of course. But it may be an even bigger setback for the nation’s nascent offshore wind industry — the latest of many.
For its part, GE’s renewable energy division says it remains committed to the US offshore wind industry and is “confident in the legal and technical options available to us.”
Nordic Aquafarms wins one court victory, faces another legal battle in Maine
September 9, 2022 — Nordic Aquafarms, which is seeking to build a land-based Atlantic salmon farm in the U.S. state of Maine, won a court victory on 1 September that ended a challenge to the permitting of its proposed recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) farm.
Waldo County Superior Court Justice Robert Murray ruled in favor of Nordic Aquafarms, quashing a request by nonprofit and project opponent Upstream Watch, to require an official review of the authorizations given to the project.
Gulf of Mexico charter captains wade into red grouper court case
September 8, 2022 — Commercial fishermen who are challenging a major shift of Gulf of Mexico red grouper quotas to the recreational sector have drawn the surprising support of charter boat operators, who argue the revised quotas would hurt their businesses as well.
On its face, the decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to ratify the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s new allocation policy would give the charter fleet more fish too. But the change will bring other outcomes to hurt the charter sector, said captain Scott Hickman, operator of Circle H Outfitters and Charters in Galveston, Texas, and a board member of the Charter Fishermen’s Association.
“We’ve been down this road before,” said Hickman. “You set a precedent for taking quota from an accountable sector, and dropping it into a black hole.”
Announced by NMFS this spring, Amendment 53 to the Gulf reef fish plan would reduce the annual commercial allocation to 59.3 percent, down from 76 percent, and increase the recreational allocation from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.
The move is being challenged in federal district court by the Galveston, Texas-based Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders Alliance, the A.P. Bell Fish Company, of Cortez, Florida, and the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, a longliner group based in Madeira Beach, Florida.
Chinook lawsuit still looms over Alaska trollers
September 7, 2022 –A lawsuit filed against National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a Washington district court on Aug. 8, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.
The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that Southeast trollers catch.
The premise of the case is that NMFS, in its biological opinion, did not consider a portion of the commingling stocks as forage fish for a pod of 74 killer whales in Puget Sound, rendering the agency out of compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
Like other legal battles between the fishing industry and environmental groups, this case stems from differing interpretations of the data.
The Wild Fish Conservancy contends that 97 percent of the troll-caught chinooks originate in drainages outside of Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, meanwhile, estimates those numbers between 30 and 80 percent, and that the percentages vary each year.
Though some feared that a subsequent injunction filed by the conservancy could stop the fishery after the initial case was filed in 2020, that didn’t happen.
Court: Lawsuit accusing North Carolina of not protecting right to fish can proceed
September 7, 2022 — The North Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously ruled the state can be sued for failing to protect the right of its citizens to fish.
Appeals Court Judge Toby Hampson on Tuesday published a 27-page opinion stating the lawsuit, Coastal Conservation Association v. North Carolina, could not be dismissed based on the state’s claim it possessed sovereign immunity in the matter.
The state contended it had no constitutional mandate to preserve the right of the people to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife for the public good. North Carolinians voted in 2018 to include in the state Constitution those specific rights.
Maine Lobstering Union drops part of lawsuit against NOAA Fisheries
August 25, 2022 — The Maine Lobstering Union is agreeing to drop part of its lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Services, where the federal agency is closing a 960-square-mile section of the Gulf of Maine to lobster fishers.
Federal regulators said this section of ocean is prime habitat for North Atlantic right whales and argued blocking that part of the ocean off from buoy lines from Oct. 18 to Jan. 31, 2023, would help reduce the risk posed to entanglements between lobster gear and whales.
Alfred C Frawley with McCloskey, Mina, Cunniff, and Frawley, LLC, said in an email the move was made as federal agencies add more regulations against the lobster industry.
“The MLU has taken the procedural step of agreeing to dismiss its case in Maine, which was largely mooted by the DC Court’s recent decision, in order to focus its resources on the ongoing litigation in DC and on ensuring that NMFS issues a new rule that both protects the North Atlantic right whale and ensures the sustainability of Maine’s lobster fishery,” Frawley said in an email to NEWS CENTER Maine.
Louisiana AG Jeff Landry looks to intervene in lawsuit over red grouper fish quotas
August 24, 2022 — Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is getting involved in a legal battle over recreational fishing in the state.
He has filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit challenging a National Marine Fisheries Service rule that deals with quotas for Gulf of Mexico red grouper fish.
Judge rules lobster gear regulations will go into effect while challenged in court
August 22, 2022 — The suit was filed by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association against the National Marine Fisheries Service, and a final ruling is expected by the end of September.
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