Saving Seafood

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Barack Obama’s Midnight Regulation Express

December 23, 2016 — The technical definition of a midnight regulation is one issued between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president. The practice is bipartisan. George W. Bush, despite having promised not to do so, pushed through a fair number of rules in his final months. But Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more aggressive, and Mr. Obama is making them look like pikers.

Mr. Obama has devoted his last year to ramming through controversial and far-reaching rules. Whether it was born of a desire to lay groundwork for a Clinton presidency, or as a guard against a Trump White House, the motive makes no difference. According to a Politico story of nearly a year ago, the administration had some 4,000 regulations in the works for Mr. Obama’s last year. They included smaller rules on workplace hazards, gun sellers, nutrition labels and energy efficiency, as well as giant regulations (costing billions) on retirement advice and overtime pay.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

This follows Mr. Obama’s extraordinary announcement that he will invoke a dusty old law to place nearly all of the Arctic Ocean, and much of the Atlantic Ocean, off limits to oil or gas drilling. This follows his highly politicized move to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. And it comes amid reports the administration is rushing to implement last-minute rules on commodities speculation, immigrant workers and for-profit colleges—among others.

Any action that is rushed is likely to be shoddy, especially if it’s from the federal government. The point is for Mr. Obama to have his way and to swamp the Trump administration with a dizzying array of new rules to have to undo. That diverts manpower from bigger and better priorities.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal 

President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans

December 21st, 2016 — President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.

“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement. “They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited.

White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Proposed rule: Shrimpers should use safety devices to protect endangered sea turtles

December 16th, 2016 — In an effort to save thousands of endangered sea turtles, the Obama administration on Thursday issued proposed rules that would require U.S. shrimping boats to insert metal grates into their nets to allow the gentle creatures to escape.

By requiring “Turtle Excluder Devices” in the nets of U.S. shrimpers, some 800 to 2,500 sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean could be saved each year, according to the proposal, which will be published Friday in the Federal Register by the Department of Commerce.

If adopted and enforced, the rule would cut the prevalence of what’s known as “bycatch,” the unintended capture of marine creatures by commercial fishing vessels that are looking for different species.

Currently, less than half of U.S. shrimp boats are required to use the Excluder devices, according to Oceana, an international marine conservation and advocacy group. The new rule would require roughly 5,800 additional boats to do so.

David Veal, executive director of the American Shrimp Processors Association in Biloxi, Mississippi, said his organization shares the public’s concern for sea turtles, but he questions Oceana’s claim that shrimpers kill tens of thousands of turtles each year.

He said contact with recreational fisheries, damage from vessels and environmental problems all cause turtle deaths.

“While we’re sensitive to the sea turtles’ (plight) and we’ll do what we have to do to minimize the impact on the turtle population, we continue to believe that it’s unfair to target us as the sole source of these problems,” Veal said.

Read the full story at The Miami Herald 

To protect coral, bottom fishing gear banned near Delaware’s coast

December 16th, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is banning commercial fishing gear that could drag along the seafloor in part of the Atlantic Ocean – including a portion 66 miles off the Delaware coast.

Deep-sea coral can live for hundreds to thousands of years, but once they are damaged, they can take decades or even centuries to re-grow.

To ensure these corals can live undisturbed, a section of the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Virginia – about the size of Virginia – has been designated as “protected”. The protected area is about 66 miles from Delaware’s shore and covers a portion of the Baltimore Canyon. Joseph Gordon, Pew Charitable Trust’s manager of U.S. northeast oceans, said that means fishing gear that reaches down to the depths that deep-sea coral inhabit would not be allowed to operate there.

“They’ve lived a long time but they live in an environment that is cold, with huge pressure, without light,” Gordon said, about the coral. “And so fishing technology could damage them in a way that could take centuries to recover from.”

Some bottom-fishing technologies include rockhoppers and canyon-busters. They are designed to roll over boulders and canyons, and according to Oceana, they can weigh at least several hundred pounds. NOAA authorizes the gear that fishermen can use for commercial fishing, and documented almost 1,000 bottom-fishing technologies in use in the Mid-Atlantic region in 2016. That is up from 630 documented in 2013.

Read the full story at Delaware Public Media 

Alternative Energy Collides With Fishermen’s Livelihood Off Long Island

December 15, 2016 — The following is excerpted from an article published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It was written by Joseph De Avila:

The federal government on Thursday plans to auction off a parcel of 79,000 acres in the Atlantic Ocean just south of Long Island to build a wind farm over fishing grounds that scallop and squid fishermen say are vital to their trade.

Bidders hope to secure a 25-year lease to operate a wind farm, to sell the electricity to energy-hungry Long Island and the New York City region. Offshore wind is a big part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan for New York to get half of its energy from alternative sources by 2030.

But the commercial fishing industry opposes building wind turbines on this particular stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, which is sandwiched between shipping lanes into and out of the New York harbor. “We are very afraid we are going to lock up an area of the bottom that is definitely favorable for scallop settlement,” said James Gutowski, a scallop fisherman from Barnegat Light, N.J., and chairman of the Fisheries Survival Fund.

Members of the fishing industry say the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management didn’t adequately consider what the impact would have on scallop and squid fishing grounds. The Fisheries Survival Fund and other members of the fishing industry filed a lawsuit last Thursday in a Washington, D.C., federal court seeking an injunction to block the lease from going into effect.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already removed about 1,780 acres from the lease area after the National Marine Fisheries Service flagged that parcel as a sensitive habitat and a prime commercial fishing spot.

The bureau also has awarded 11 offshore wind leases so far, including sites off Massachusetts, Delaware and Virginia. The developers for each of those projects are currently conducting site assessments, according to the bureau, which declined to comment on the lawsuit. A hearing is set for February. Other plaintiffs include the Garden State Seafood Association and the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

Offshore-wind developer Deepwater Wind, based in Rhode Island, began operating the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. on Monday off Block Island, R.I., near the tip of Montauk. It also has a site located between Montauk and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., that it plans to build in phases. The first phase could begin construction in 2019 and would provide enough energy for more than 50,000 homes for Long Island’s South Fork.

A 2011 plan for the strip of the Atlantic Ocean, located about 11.5 miles from Jones Beach, called for building 194 turbines that would generate enough electricity to power 245,000 homes. But today’s improved wind technology could generate even more power, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is managing the auction. “There is significant market demand” in the region, said Tracey Blythe Moriarty, a bureau spokeswoman.

Some 14 organizations have qualified to bid during Thursday’s auction, including the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA. The authority is the first state entity to participate in a federal offshore wind auction, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal 

Proposed Atlantic wind energy lease auction to proceed

December 13th, 2016 — The federal government’s plan to auction the development rights to a huge offshore windfarm in the Atlantic Ocean between New York and New Jersey will proceed Thursday.

Groups representing the fishing industry in four states sought to delay the auction. But an agreement between the groups and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will allow it to proceed.

A lawyer for the fishing groups says they still will be able to seek a halt to the final sale during a federal court proceeding now scheduled for Feb. 8, 2017.

Andrew Minkiewicz says the delay gives both sides more time to submit documents. A judge in Washington, D.C., agreed to the plan Monday.

The groups, including scallop fishermen, claim the 127-square-mile project would harm their business.

A BOEM spokeswoman declined comment.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald 

Last plea to Obama on offshore drilling limits

November 17, 2016 — WASHINGTON — Oil and gas exploration in the U.S. waters of the Atlantic Ocean may put some legacy economic interests at risk, a consortium of area businesses said.

More than 10,000 business and hundreds of thousands of families tied to commercial fishing sent a letter through an Atlantic Coast business alliance to President Barack Obama urging him to hold off on expanding access to potential drillers.

Energy companies use seismic surveys to get a better understanding of the oil and gas reserve potential and some groups have expressed concern that action could have a detrimental impact on marine ecosystems. Seismic research could interfere with normal communication patterns for some marine species, though contractors said the impacts are temporary.

The consortium said in their letter to the White House that seismic work could disrupt the 1.4 million area jobs and the $95 billion in economic activity tied to regional fishing, tourism and recreation.

Read the full story at UPI

U.S. plans to lease New Jersey seafloor for wind farm

October 28th, 2016 — The federal government will hold an auction in December to lease nearly 80,000 acres of the Atlantic Ocean seafloor for a developer to build a large wind farm about 18 miles southeast of Sandy Hook.

The triangular area, about 12.5 miles south of Long Beach, on Long Island, is slightly smaller than originally intended, to exclude an environmentally sensitive section of seafloor known as the Cholera Bank, which has an irregular bottom that attracts an abundance of sea life. As a result, it has long been a favorite spot for fishermen to gather year round to bottom fish for blues, cod, blackfish and bonito.

The auction, set for Dec. 15, will come just a year after the Obama administration awarded leases to two companies to build wind farms off the southern coast of New Jersey.

“New York is a critical component in building a robust U.S. offshore wind industry,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees commercial offshore wind leases.

The agency conducted a study to determine the visual impact of a hypothetical wind farm in the area to be leased. The simulation shows how a wind farm would look from Fire Island and Jones Beach on the Long Island coast, as well as from Sandy Hook and Asbury Park along the New Jersey coast.

Read the full story at Asbury Park Press 

Eel migration study tells ‘romantic’ tale

October 6, 2016 — Scientists are a step closer to solving the mystery of one of the great animal migrations.

Each autumn, eels leave European rivers to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to breed for a single time, then die.

Tagging studies show that the fish swim more than 3,000 miles (4,800 km) to the Sargasso Sea.

But, rather than one mass spawning in the spring – an idea held for a century – their arrival is staggered, UK researchers say.

“Eel migration is a rather romantic tale,” said lead researcher David Righton, head of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) in Lowestoft.

“Eels only spawn once in their lifetime and then they die, so they’re making this final journey of their life, towards the Sargasso Sea, to meet their life’s goals, if you like.

“And so the fact that we’ve got a little bit of insight into that – but we’ve also got some new questions about how eels tackle that really fundamental problem of meeting that life goal – is really, really fascinating.”

Read the full story at the BBC

NEW JERSEY: Some of the long-term challenges facing New Jersey’s beach replenishment efforts

September 30, 2016 — Even before hurricane Hermine threatened to strip New Jersey’s beaches yet again earlier this month, skeptics questioned how the state and Army Corps of Engineers can commit to spending nearly $2 billion in beach replenishment through the mid 21st century.

Mercifully, Hermine headed farther east over the Atlantic Ocean, sparing New Jersey’s beach replenishment program another price increase.

But the question of whether the program is misguided, due to its high price on both the taxpayers and the environment remains. It will need continual rejuvenation as even the best-engineered beaches lose sand frequently regardless of storms.

Depleting underwater sand piles

As sand becomes increasingly valuable, fisherman expect underwater ridges to be depleted, despite being home to large schools of fish and other sea life. And with an expected sea-level rise, there’s no telling how the ecosystem will adjust or how much sand will be required. The only certainty is that local underwater sand hills will be exhausted before century’s end.

Judging from the experience with building Long Beach Island beaches — where historic ridges called the Harvey Cedar Lumps are nearly mined out — it appears certain that underwater sand hills close to the beaches will be gone within decades.

Read the full story at Newsworks