Saving Seafood

First offshore wind farm goes offline: An industry warning?

November 2, 2020 — In the new year, the first offshore wind farm in the United States will shut off its turbines, and its customers on nearby Block Island in Rhode Island will revert to diesel generation.

The rocky saeabed around Block Island has been worn away by tides and storms, sometimes exposing high-voltage cables in a popular swimming location that developers failed to bury deep enough when the facility was brought online in 2016. To splice in newly buried cables, the wind farm will go offline for a brief period this spring.

At $30 million for one leg of the fix and an undisclosed amount for the other, it’s a costly problem to crop up for the nation’s first offshore wind farm, and it’s not totally isolated.

Read the full story at E&E News

President’s windmill hatred is a worry for booming industry

October 1, 2019 — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.

Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.

“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”

But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.

He’s called them “disgusting” and “ugly” and “stupid,” denouncing them in hundreds of anti-wind tweets and public comments dating back more than a decade, when he tried and failed to block a wind farm near his Scottish golf course.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Special zone around Block Island proposed

September 16, 2019 — OK, you fish Block Island and want to bring your black sea bass, summer flounder or scup catch back to your home port in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut or New York. You caught the fish in state waters — within the three-mile limit surrounding Block Island (federal water is from three to 200 miles offshore) and you have a state fishing permit.

But here’s the catch. To get those Block Island fish home you need to cross federal waters as Block Island’s northern tip is about seven miles from shore. So you will need to cross a mile-wide section of federal waters, and if you do, you may be transporting them illegally.

The State of Rhode Island, under the leadership of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), has been advocating to establish a Block Island Sound Transit Zone for state-only permitted vessels fishing in, and returning to state waters.

The transit zone would mirror the current transit area for striped bass and allow for transit by state-only permitted commercial, party/charter vessels and private recreational anglers with summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass on board that were legally harvested in state waters.

Read the full story at The Providence Journal

Wind turbines and fishing nets fight for offshore space

September 10, 2019 — If Block Island represents the promise of offshore wind, the industry faces a series of challenges lurking just beneath the surface of the waves. Opponents of offshore wind have raised concerns ranging from the turbines’ impact on military radar to worries they could clog shipping channels. Perhaps most dangerous to developers’ ambitions: the growing and increasingly coordinated opposition from the commercial fishing industry.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt recently delayed Vineyard Wind, an 84-turbine project planned for the shallow waters 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, out of concern for its impact on fishing. The $2.8 billion project had been scheduled to begin construction this fall, putting it on course to become the first large-scale offshore wind development in the United States.

Now its future looks less certain. Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist who has made deregulation a hallmark of his tenure, has said he will not allow the project to proceed until a cumulative impact study of all the projects planned along the Eastern Seaboard can be completed (Climatewire, Aug. 12).

Read the full story at National Wind Watch

Rhode Island fishermen critical of wind farm plan

August 5, 2019 — The nation’s first major offshore wind farm won a key approval from Rhode Island regulators in February, but only after stirring acrimony within the state’s fishing industry.

Now, amid an atmosphere of suspicion created by the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project, the next offshore wind proposal in line is being considered for a key approval by the state Coastal Resources Management Council. And there are concerns that the project, the South Fork Wind Farm, will lead to more difficulties for commercial fishermen who ply their trade in the waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Just like with Vineyard Wind, the potential complications arise from the orientation and spacing of the project’s turbines.

Developers Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy say that they’ve taken into account the concerns of fishermen by configuring the wind farm’s up to 15 turbines from east to west with rows that are 1 nautical mile (about 1.2 miles) apart. The spacing from north to south, however, would be smaller, with either 0.8 or 1 mile between turbines.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Anglers want more say in offshore wind projects

July 1, 2019 — As the charter fishing vessel Seven B’s V relentlessly pounded through 2-foot chop, the slowly revolving blades of five offshore wind turbines rose out of the bank of morning fog and drizzle. Three miles off the southeast corner of Block Island, these turbines supply power to the island, replacing diesel generators that burned a million gallons of fuel each year and emitted 40,000 tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere.

But a beneficial byproduct of these 390-foot-tall turbines is hidden beneath the waves.

Fish.

Soon after the turbines were installed in 2016, algae and other sea vegetation started growing on the 90 feet of support columns underwater. Mussels followed, then fish.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Offshore Wind, Commercial Fishing Industries Partnering Up In Unusual Collaboration

January 18, 2019 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a group representing fishermen from Maine to North Carolina formed specifically to interact with offshore wind companies, and developer Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind (formerly Deepwater Wind) said the partnership is the first-of-its-kind.

As development of offshore wind farms is underway off of Rhode Island and Massachusetts’ coasts, commercial fishermen have been in talks with developers to figure out the best way to build wind farms that sustain the fishing industry.

However, RODA and Orsted feel the way the industries have been engaging with one another has been inefficient.

“The fishermen are being pulled in a million directions and we’re very excited to have a more structured approach where we can get that input and give it back to the developers as well as to the government,” Annie Hawkins, executive director of RODA, said.

Jeff Grybowski, Co-CEO of Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind, agreed the new partnership will make it easier for the industries to communicate.

“It can often be difficult for a developer to find the right people to talk to because obviously fishermen are, they’re small businesses and some of them are big businesses, but there are lots of different people,” Grybowski said.

Hawkins added the goal is to have fewer, more productive meetings, however any recommendations that come out of them are nonbinding.

Commercial fishermen have raised multiple concerns about offshore wind farms, such as the layout of the turbines affecting their access to fishing grounds and ability to safely return to shore, and spinning turbines interfering with their radar navigation.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

Coast Guard suspends search for missing fishermen

January 4, 2019 — After more than 40 hours of intensive search over an area covering 2,152 nautical miles, the Coast Guard suspended its search for two Rhode Island fishermen who went missing after their vessel capsized about two-and-a-half miles southeast of Block Island.

The search began immediately after the captain of the fishing vessel Mistress, home-ported out of Pt. Judith, notified the Coast Guard at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 1, that the vessel was taking on water. After the Coast Guard sent out an urgent request for assistance, a nearby fishing vessel, the Captain Bligh, was able to rescue one of the Mistress crew members, while the other two remained missing by the time the search was called off on Tuesday at 5:13 p.m.

Various news outlets have identified the two missing crew members as boat owner Oscar Diaz and his nephew John Ansay. The Captain Bligh rescued Tim Diaz, who has been identified in news reports as Oscar Diaz’s son.

The trouble began at around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 1: “The captain of the fishing vessel Mistress notified watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England at around 1:30 a.m. that the boat was taking on water. The watchstanders issued an urgent marine information broadcast to vessels in the area to request assistance for the crew of the Mistress. The fishing boat Captain Bligh responded and rescued one crew member from a life boat. The remaining two crew members have not been located. Low visibility and poor weather conditions hampered initial searches, but multiple crews launched as visibility improved,” the press release stated.

Read the full story at The Block Island Times

Two fishermen are missing after boat capsizes off Block Island, R.I.

January 2, 2019 — The Coast Guard and a good Samaritan were searching Tuesday for two missing fishermen after their boat capsized early New Year’s Day off Block Island, Rhode Island, officials said.

The captain of the Mistress issued a mayday call at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday to say the fishing boat was taking on water near Block Island Wind Farm, which is nearly 4 miles from shore, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

BOEM requires transit corridors for offshore wind energy areas

October 22, 2018 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management is requiring offshore wind energy developers to set aside vessel transit corridors, amid intense discussions with the commercial fishing industry.

In a notice published Friday in the Federal Register, the agency announced it would offer an additional 390,000 acres south of Massachusetts for lease on Dec. 13. That would extend large areas already leased from Block Island, R.I., to south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The BOEM notice includes a new requirement for planning safe transit lanes through future arrays of turbine towers on the shallow continental shelf.

“The fishing industry has raised concerns with the ability to safely transit the existing and offered leases, particularly with their ability to quickly and safely return to port during inclement weather,” agency officials wrote.

At a Sept. 20 meeting in Massachusetts, Coast Guard officials and fishing industry groups proposed transit lanes through the leases to BOEM and wind developers Baystate Wind, Vineyard Wind and Deepwater Wind (since merged with Norwegian energy company Equinor, formerly known as Statoil).

“Representatives from the squid, groundfish, scallop, and other fisheries agreed that the two nautical-mile-wide transit corridors through the existing leases would provide the ability to safely transit to and from the fishing grounds. BOEM expects these, or similar, transit corridors to be finalized in the near future, and future lessees will be required to incorporate them into their plans,” the lease sale notice states.

Read the full story at Work Boat