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.
RHODE ISLAND: Anglers Concerned About Effects of Mayflower Wind Project’s Cable on Fish Habitats
September 9, 2022 — An organized group of recreational anglers are opposing a proposal that would bury an export cable from a new offshore wind farm under the Sakonnet River.
The Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association has come out against the proposal from offshore wind developer Mayflower Wind, expressing concerns over the impacts to existing fish habitats, and recreational fishing.
“We believe that during cable installation, an industrial operation such as burying a cable that is more than a foot wide will disturb fishing across the entire River,” wrote RISAA president Greg Vespa in a letter sent last month to Mayflower Wind.
The group instead advocates for Mayflower Wind to avoid using the river entirely and proposed that the company run the cable over land in Massachusetts from Westport to Fall River, where land is already developed and disturbance to habitats would be minimal.
RISAA also expressed concern over the impacts to cod stocks. The New England Fishery Management Council has designated the Sakonnet River as an inshore juvenile cod habitat area of particular concern, and cod fishing remains restricted.
Mayflower Wind said it has conducted extensive field surveys to assess seabed conditions across its entire project area, including the proposed cable corridor in the Sakonnet River. The bottom of the river is mostly mud and silt, with areas of crepidula, a kind of colonizing mollusk, according to preliminary data from the company.
Results of the field surveys will be assessed by the appropriate Rhode Island agencies for potential impacts on fish habitats, but the company asserts the impacts to fishing will remain minimal.
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.
Tuna companies, NGOs call on FAO to better protect the welfare of fishers
September 9, 2022 — Seven members of the seafood industry and seven NGOs are calling upon the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to better protect the fisher’s welfare on wild-caught vessels by improving data collection and analysis of labor-related accidents.
Three major tuna processors, the Bolton Group, Bumble Bee, and Tri-Marine, along with seafood industry groups of Fedespesca, SEA Alliance, and the Hong Kong Sustainable Seafood Coalition have signed the call to action, which includes asking for a mechanism to gather better data and reduce fisher morality. The NGOs involved in the campaign are Earthworm, ADM Capital Foundation, ClientEarth, the Fishing Industry Association Papua New Guinea (FIA PNG), Friend of the Sea, FishWise, the Global Seafood Alliance, and the Teng Hoi Conservation Organization.
Retailers pull lobster from menus after ‘red list’ warning
September 9, 2022 — Some retailers are taking lobster off the menu after an assessment from an influential conservation group that the harvest of the seafood poses too much of a risk to rare whales and should be avoided.
The organization, based at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, said in a report that the fishing industry is a danger to North Atlantic right whales because “current management measures do not go far enough to mitigate entanglement risks and promote recovery of the species.”
housands of businesses use Seafood Watch’s recommendations to inform seafood buying decisions, and many have pledged to avoid any items that appear on the red list. A spokesperson for Blue Apron, the New York meal kit retailer, said the company stopped offering a seasonal lobster box prior to the report, and all of the seafood it is currently using follows Seafood Watch’s guidelines. HelloFresh, the Germany-based meal kit company that is the largest such company operating in the U.S., also pledged shortly after the announcement to stop selling lobster.
New Bedford officials say BOEM must demand mitigation, monitoring from wind developers
September 9, 2022 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management must make a stand on requiring offshore wind developers to commit to mitigation and monitoring to safeguard the $5.5 billion U.S. commercial fishing industry, the New Bedford Port Authority says in a detailed, insistent new commentary to the agency.
“BOEM has the clear statutory authority to require certain actions and hold developers to standards as part of” granting permits for offshore wind projects, the Port Authority says in its nine-page Aug. 22 missive to BOEM Director Amanda Lefton, signed by port authority interim executive director George Krikorian Jr.
“Any ability left to the wind developers to choose their own procedures will always result in them taking the least expensive path most favorable to them, not commercial fishing.”
Read the full article at the National Fisherman
NOAA Fisheries announces $2.3M in funding for 13 projects under its Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program
September 8, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries has awarded approximately $2.3 million to 13 projects under the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program. Bycatch reduction is a top priority for NOAA Fisheries, as outlined in our National Bycatch Reduction Strategy, because bycatch can contribute to overfishing, threaten endangered and threatened species and protected marine mammals, or close fisheries, significantly impacting U.S. economic growth. This year’s projects focus on several priority bycatch issues related to a variety of species, including whales, turtles, sharks, sturgeon, and halibut.
NOAA Fisheries’ Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program has resulted in innovative technological solutions to some of the nation’s top bycatch challenges. NOAA Fisheries is proud to continue to partner with fishermen, fishery managers, industry, and the environmental community to avoid and minimize bycatch.
Greater Atlantic Region Projects
- Sea Mammal Education Learning Technology Society: $199,824
- Cormac Hondros-McCarthy: $211,290
- Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County: $205,240
- University of Maine: $210,822
- Ocean Associates Incorporated: $199,154
An intense marine heat wave is setting ocean temperature records in the North Atlantic
September 8, 2022 — It’s not just land seeing record heat waves.
Ocean waters in the Northern Hemisphere have been unusually warm in recent weeks, with parts of the North Atlantic and northern Pacific undergoing particularly intense marine heat waves.
Sea surface temperatures in these regions hit record levels this summer, said Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Parts of the Pacific and North Atlantic have been anywhere from 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) warmer than average at times, conditions that have not been observed since record keeping began roughly six decades ago.
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