September 7, 2023 — Alaska is pushing for an increase in mariculture and kelp-farming sites across the state in an attempt to provide employment opportunities for Indigenous Alaskans.
At the second annual Seagriculture conference, a seaweed and mariculture conference taking place 6 and 7 September in Portland, Maine, U.S.A., Markos Scheer, the founder and CEO of Craig, Alaska-based mariculture firm Seagrove, touted the latest investments and innovation slated for Alaska’s mariculture sector.
September 6, 2023 — A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.
The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.
The project falls under President Biden‘s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.
But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns
September 6, 2023 — Gabriel Prout worked four seasons on his father’s crab boat, the Silver Spray, before joining his two brothers in 2020 to buy a half-interest plus access rights for a snow crab fishery that’s typically the largest and richest in the Bering Sea. Then in 2021, disaster: an annual survey found crabs crashing to an all-time low. The red king crab fishery was closed; the snow crab fishery cut to a tenth of the previous year’s take.
After another bad survey last year, the red king crab fishery closed again and the snow crab fishery closed for the first time ever. Suddenly, Prout’s optimism about being his family’s third generation in crab fishing seemed misplaced.
“It’s very hard to find a way to keep going forward,” said Prout, 33. With almost all his expected income gone, he’s scrambled ever since to scratch out a living by working as a salmon tender — using his boat to supply other boats and offload their catch.
September 6, 2023 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy made it clear at a press conference on Friday just how crucial a motion filed by the State of Alaska is for the future of fisheries conservation in Alaska.
Dunleavy, along with Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, spoke to the press for about 15 minutes in Anchorage about the state’s motion to reject a lawsuit brought by the federal government over the state’s management of fisheries on the Kuskokwim River.
“What I want the people of Alaska to understand is we didn’t choose this fight, the feds forced it on us,” Dunleavy said. “The stakes obviously couldn’t be higher because this really has to do with management of our fisheries and potentially down the road game as well. [It] has to do with sovereignty over our waters.”
The state is arguing the federal government does not have the authority to manage the fishery on the Kuskokwim because the Kuskokwim River is not public land.
September 6, 2023 — Blue Harvest Fisheries in New Bedford has closed down all its fishing operations.
The New Bedford Light is reporting the shutdown comes after the company spent the last five years selling off assets in an apparent effort to stay afloat.
But Blue Harvest, which was founded in 2015, also acquired assets during that period. In 2020, the company bought 12 vessels and 27 permits from the holdings of Carlos Rafael, the fishing mogul who was convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
Jared Auerbach, the CEO of the seafood distributor Red’s Best says Blue Harvest is huge — owning a quarter of the region’s groundfish fleet. Red’s Best was a customer of Blue Harvest.
September 6, 2023 — Beachgoers spent their summer enjoying a reprieve from scorching temperatures, frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean, but marine life had a more difficult summer in the water as seismic testing related to offshore wind surveying is believed, by some, to have caused stress to certain species.
Kirk O. Larson, who has spent more than five decades on the water as a commercial fisherman while serving as Barnegat Light mayor for more than 30 years, said scallops, calamari (squid) and sea bass were among the species to experience stress and disturbance.
In fact, every time seismic testing occurs, sea bass “are hoppling up, scared to death on the bottom of the ocean. They probably won’t spawn this year, like the scallops and the squid. The ramifications down the road, in my mind … You can fact check me next year,” he told a crowd of more than 300 people at Bay Breeze Pavilion in Barnegat Light on Aug. 27.
September 5, 2023 — Fed up with state coastal regulators’ perceived “deference” to offshore wind developers, all nine members of an advisory panel of Rhode Island fishing industry representatives have quit.
In a letter sent Thursday, Aug. 31, to Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) Executive Director Jeff Willis, the entire Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board (FAB) declared its members were resigning effective immediately. The decision comes amid mounting tension between offshore wind developers and fishermen over the slew of offshore wind projects planned in and around Rhode Island waters.
“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” the letter, which was obtained by Rhode Island Current, stated. “Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”
Laura Dwyer, a spokesperson for the CRMC, said in an emailed response Friday that the agency was “disappointed” by the news.
“The FAB has provided valuable information and insight to the CRMC for its federal consistency reviews of offshore wind energy projects,” Dwyer said. “While unfortunate, these resignations do not affect the CRMC’s review scope, obligations and timelines as contained in the federal [regulations]. The CRMC remains hopeful that the Rhode Island fishing community will continue to participate in the public process for reviewing offshore wind energy projects, as well as any other projects affecting the fishery resources of the State.”
September 5, 2023 — GOV. MAURA HEALEY launched what she described as the region’s largest offshore wind procurement this week. “With our top academic institutions, robust workforce training programs, innovative companies, and support from every level of government – Massachusetts is all-in on offshore wind,” she said.
But what her press release failed to mention was that this procurement comes at a very risky time for offshore wind, with the industry battered by economic and supply chain challenges and developers responding by pushing for higher prices for the electricity being produced.
In July, Rhode Island’s largest utility opted not to move forward with a wind farm deal because the cost “was deemed too expensive for customers to bear.”
A new study released this week indicates the developers of four proposed New York wind farms are seeking revisions to previously approved power purchase agreements that would boost the price anywhere from 27 percent to 66 percent, with a weighted average increase across all four wind farms of 48 percent.
The study, by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), raises questions about some aspects of the wind developers’ proposed price increases, but overall it says the market conditions that have engulfed the industry are legitimate and real.
“These market conditions, driven in large part by increased demand for raw materials, an increased demand for large-scale renewable energy caused primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as supply chain constraints and bottlenecks, are unprecedented in recent history, outside of reasonable developer control, and were unforeseeable at the time of each bid,” the study says.
September 2, 2023 — In the seemingly mad rush to achieve the nation’s climate goals and maximize the renewable energy opportunities presented by the Inflation Reduction Act, offshore wind farms are, or will be, cropping up near many miles of U.S. coastline. Activist groups, new and old, continue to mobilize and make their voices heard.
MOVE ’EM OUT, a New Jersey nonprofit organization devoted to preserving the unique charm and ecological balance of the state’s beaches, recently announced its opposition to proposed wind projects, underscoring the detrimental impact on New Jersey’s southern shoreline ecology, local and statewide economy and its vibrant communities.
September 2, 2023 — Orsted, the global wind energy developer, says its first offshore wind farm in New Jersey will be delayed until 2026 due to supply chain issues, higher interest rates, and a failure so far to garner enough tax credits from the federal government.
The Danish company revealed the delay during an earnings conference call Wednesday, during which it said it could be forced to write off about $2.3 billion on U.S. projects that are worth less than they had been.
It also said it had considered simply abandoning the Ocean Wind I project off the southern New Jersey coast.