October 28, 2024 — According to a letter he wrote to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, New Bedford Port Authority Executive Director Gordon Carr has “grave concern” for the scallop fishing industry in the face of a potential new call area to be leased out to offshore wind projects.
The 13,476,805-acre area off of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina — dubbed the “Central Atlantic 2” call area — encompasses a large portion of key scalloping grounds, Carr wrote.
In his Oct. 21 letter, sent on the last day of BOEM’s comment period, Carr wrote that throughout New Bedford’s process of developing “the first large scale offshore wind industrial marshalling port,” the port “has been diligent in providing comments for multiple offshore wind projects underway and proposed for the future.”