Saving Seafood

Offshore wind energy plans in the Gulf take a back seat to oil drilling under new law

February 6, 2023 — President Joe Biden’s administration is tapping the brakes on offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico to make way for a new fast-tracked effort to open more federal waters to oil and gas drilling.

The move, which runs counter to Biden’s ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the growth of renewable energy, will delay the first-ever auction of wind energy lease areas in the Gulf by at least six months.

Wind energy companies had been lining up to bid on a 174,000-acre area south of Lake Charles and a 508,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas in late December. The two lease areas have the potential to generate enough power for almost 3 million homes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. But Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act put those plans on hold, likely until sometime this summer, federal regulators confirmed this week.

Read the full article at nola.com

E.P.A. Blocks Long-Disputed Mine Project in Alaska

January 31, 2023 — The Biden administration on Tuesday moved to protect one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries, at Bristol Bay in Alaska, by effectively blocking the development of a gold and copper mine there.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final determination under the Clean Water Act that bans the disposal of mine waste in part of the bay’s watershed, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Streams in the watershed are crucial breeding grounds for salmon, but the area also contains deposits of precious-metal ores thought to be worth several hundred billion dollars.

A two-decades old proposal to mine those ores, called the Pebble project, has been supported by some Alaskan lawmakers and Native groups for the economic benefits it would bring, but opposed by others, including tribes around the bay and environmentalists who say it would do irreparable harm to the salmon population.

Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, which has long opposed the mine, said the decision “was a real moment of justice for us.”

Read the full article at The New York Times

Inflation crippling wind energy despite Biden climate law, turbine giant says

January 17, 2023 — A leading wind turbine maker is imploring Washington and state governments for more policy support only months after Congress passed hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for green energy, arguing the new law alone is insufficient to help the industry reckon with high inflation.

The ask from Spanish manufacturer Siemens Gamesa illustrates how the persistence of inflation poses a threat to the decarbonization goals of President Joe Biden, who is now ill-equipped to pass new policy to supplement the new Democratic climate law with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives.

Siemens Gamesa said the Inflation Reduction Act, which the unified Democratic government passed in August, provided strong incentives and sends positive signals to the industry but is not a “silver bullet” due to the lasting and limiting effects that inflation is having on new investment.

Read the full article at the Washington Examiner

Soaring Costs Threaten U.S. Offshore-Wind Buildout

January 3, 2023 — Offshore wind developers are facing financial challenges that threaten to derail several East Coast projects critical to reaching the Biden administration’s near-term clean-energy targets.

Supply-chain snarls, rising interest rates and inflationary pressures are making projects far more expensive to build. Now, some developers are looking to renegotiate financing agreements to keep their projects under way.

The Biden administration has set a target for the U.S. to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030—enough to supply electricity to roughly 10 million homes. Analysts say that target will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if cost and supply issues persist.

“We’re seeing unexpected and unprecedented macroeconomic challenges,” said David Hardy, chief executive of the Americas for Danish power company Ørsted A/S, which is developing about five gigawatts of offshore wind projects off the coast between Rhode Island and Maryland.

Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish power company Iberdrola SA, is developing a 1.2-gigawatt project called Commonwealth Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. The company in December asked the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to terminate its review of contracts the company negotiated with utilities serving the state. The company said it now intends to scrap the contracts and rebid the project next year to account for higher costs. 

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

How Maine lobstermen turned a ‘slap in the face’ from the White House into a policy victory

December 23, 2022 — Maine lobstermen who are fighting a federal regulation that threatens to eliminate their state’s lobstering heritage scored a policy victory in the $1.7 trillion spending bill after a White House state dinner put the controversy in the spotlight.

After a push from Maine lawmakers, Congress inserted a provision into the 2023 omnibus spending bill that will temporarily pause a federal rule aimed at protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale, but that lobstermen said threatened to put family-owned lobster fisheries out of business.

The regulatory battle had been hard fought for several months, but with little national attention. But when President Biden served 200 Maine lobsters at a White House state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron, that put a spotlight on the controversy that opened the door for Biden’s crippling policy to be curbed, at least for now.

“As a commercial fisherman, I’m glad to see lobster on the menu at the White House,” Dustin Delano, vice president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview after the White House dinner.

“But as a commercial fisherman, I’m also a bit set back,” Delano said. “It almost seems like a slap in the face like… our industry is not worth saving.”

Just a few weeks after Biden and his VIP guests dined on the New England delicacy, a delegation of Maine lawmakers successfully added a rider into next year’s spending bill that Congress was rushing to pass this week. That language will pause the regulation for six years, giving Congress time to work up a new solution that doesn’t put the lobstermen out of business.

Read the full article at Fox News

Biden administration announces additional H-2B visas

December 14, 2022 — The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden announced Monday, 12 December, that additional H-2B visas will be available for American companies in need of temporary labor over the next nine months.

The U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have jointly issued a temporary final rule that will allow nonagricultural employers to apply for 64,716 additional visas, which have been divvied up into four pools. According to a DHS news release, it’s the first time those two federal agencies have taken such a step.

Read the full article at SeafoodSoure

Maine lobstermen warn Biden admin is trying to put them out of business with harsh eco rules

December 7, 2022 — Industry groups and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from Maine are sounding the alarm that a pending federal environmental regulation would crush the state’s vaunted lobster industry.

The proponents of Maine’s nearly $1 billion lobster industry have argued that federal rules aimed at protecting the endangered right whale species from fishing equipment in federally-managed waters are unfairly attacking blue-collar lobstermen who rely on the resource to make a living. They have warned that the regulation threatens the livelihood of thousands of Maine lobstermen and individuals employed in supporting industries.

“I don’t know what we would even retrain lobstermen to do. A lot of guys are already talking about potentially selling their boats and moving elsewhere,” Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), told FOX Business in an interview. “The economy is so rural here that it’s, you couldn’t overstate how much losing the lobster dollars coming into the communities will debilitate everything.”

“It is just such a special and unique situation that we have here in Maine,” McCarron continued. “That’s why we’re all fighting so hard. We’re going to do everything in our power to keep this industry going and to keep these families here and to have lobstermen be able to proudly raise their children and see another generation of lobstermen come through because we need that.”

Read the full article at Fox Business

 

Biden’s lavish lobster dinner doesn’t change his hostility to seafood industry, fish groups say

December 3, 2022 — The following is an excerpt from an article by Fox News:

A pair of fish and seafood associations weighed in on President Biden’s upcoming lavish lobster dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Biden faced backlash on Twitter on Wednesday night from Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden over his upcoming Thursday seafood dinner with Macron featuring Maine lobster.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, commended Golden for calling out Biden on the issue and said that his organization has had trouble meeting with the current administration.

Vanasse said that it’s not just lobster, but other seafood industries like tuna and swordfish are having issues meeting with the White House.

“I applaud the congressman for calling out the administration’s hypocrisy when it comes to our domestic fisheries and their policies,” Vanasse said.

“This is not the first time that something like this has happened, but it is good to see, and particularly a Democrat pointing it out because this administration has frankly not been friendly or helpful to our domestic fishing industry,” he continued.

Vanasse said “the most egregious example of that was last summer with regard to the Atlantic Marine Monument, which President Obama created with very little scientific backing using the Antiquities Act.” He noted that the monument move prevents tuna, lobster and swordfish fishing and that America’s “sustainable red crab industry is being kicked out of that area,” as well.

“We spent three years working with the Trump administration to reverse President Obama’s ban on commercial fishing in that area,” Vanasse said. “And they did a very diligent job of looking at science before they agreed to remove the ban and allow our fishermen in that area.”

Vanasse said that the Biden administration has not followed through on its policymaking with science over politics, and that when they “were fighting for our offshore lobster industry, our red crab industry, our fishermen and our tuna fishermen” last summer, they “got one hour to defend the industry with staff at the Department of the Interior before there was even a Senate-confirmed secretary in place.”

He said that on Columbus Day last year, the Biden administration cut off their “fishermen’s right to fish for lobster, crab, swordfish and tuna” in the [Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument], adding that “this administration has been very much in bed with the more extreme environmentalists.”

“And I mean, with regard to the monument, it’s not surprising because the champion of the monument in the Obama administration was Monica Medina, and she’s married to Ron Klain, who’s the White House chief of staff,” said Vanasse. “So when we were fighting for those fisheries, we couldn’t get any Democrats to stand up to the White House. Basically, they just told us that they had tried. They called [the Department of the Interior], they called the White House. They were essentially told that there was no way, because if Trump did it, it had to be bad, and so they were going to reverse what Trump did. No science, no study. One hour of communication with the entire… with all of the people who represent those commercial fisheries that were affected.”

Vanasse said that the White House has likely served tuna and swordfish in addition to lobster, and he thinks Golden’s speaking out “will actually get the president’s attention and perhaps maybe we can actually get the kind of attention from the Biden administration that we were able to get from the Trump administration and not have our fishermen be treated as second-class citizens.”

Vanasse said he does not believe Biden “has personally done much of anything for the fishing industry” and has “delegated it to appointees in his administration.”

Regarding the dinner, Vanasse praised the White House for “thumbing their nose” at “the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program and at Whole Foods for blindly following Seafood Watch” and that he was “delighted to see them do that and for them to take a New England domestic fishery and serve it.”

He continued, “That’s what the White House should do. They should be doing this more. But it’s a bit hypocritical at the same time to be moving forward with regulations that are harming our domestic fisheries and also serving the product. You know, they’re trying to have their lobster and eat it, too, so to speak.”

Read the full story at Fox News

White House ocean climate plan must include fishermen’s ecological knowledge, advocates say

November 25, 2022 — Overall the letter stresses the needs to collect, understand and incorporate fishermen’s ecological knowledge in climate policy; acknowledge commercial fishing’s role “to the nation’s overall well-being;” consider costs, impacts and benefits in decision making; and prioritizing collaborations between agencies and stakeholders.

The process started with an Oct. 4 White House request for information to prepare the ocean climate plan, announcing the intent to span multiple activities from increasing offshore wind energy to conserving marine areas to reducing shipping emissions.

That planning process “has the opportunity to include those on the front lines of climate change,” said Mike Conroy, RODA’s West Coast director.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Looming railroad strike, barge back-up straining US supply chains

November 22, 2022 — An impending rail strike in the U.S. could further entangle supply chains and drive up inflation.

Four major railroad labor unions have rejected a tentative agreement with freight railroad companies brokered by the administration of U.S. Joe Biden over the summer. Even though eight of the 12 major railroad worker unions have ratified the agreement, several have pledged solidarity with those that have not.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource