Saving Seafood

Decline of rare right whale appears to be slowing, but scientists say big threats remain

October 23, 2023 — The decline of one of the rarest whales in the world appears to be slowing, but scientists warn the giant mammals still face existential threats from warming oceans, ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear.

The population of North Atlantic right whales, which live off the U.S. East Coast, fell by about 25% from 2010 to 2020 and was down to only about 364 whales as of 2021. Now the whales are at around 356 in total, according to a group of scientists, industry members and government officials who study them.

This suggests the population is potentially levelling off, as equal numbers of whales could be entering the population as are being killed, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium said Monday. However, getting an accurate count of the aquatic creatures involves certain ranges of error, which put estimates for 2021 and 2022 at roughly around the same number.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

A tricky, sticky mineral that’s challenging offshore wind developers

October 22, 2o23 — Offshore wind developers are encountering an unexpected challenge on the East Coast seafloor: a crushable, green mineral called glauconite, sometimes precisely where they plan to install wind turbines. The mineral — which dates back to the age of the dinosaurs — is weaker and less predictable than sand, scientists say, presenting a new engineering puzzle for researchers and wind developers to solve.

Glauconite’s behavior poses a “significant risk” to offshore wind development, said a paper published this year by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the lead regulator of offshore wind. It said glauconite formations are “abundant” along the continental shelf, and that wind developers will “inevitably” encounter the material during construction.

At least two developers have run into the mineral in a total of three offshore wind projects — two south of Massachusetts and one south of Long Island, New York. In a document published last month, BOEM wrote that the geotechnical properties of the mineral make it an “extremely difficult material to build upon,” specifically for fixed-bottom wind turbines.

Glauconite’s presence has already caused BOEM to reject proposed wind turbine layouts that might have minimized a project’s potential effects on marine life and the fishing industry.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

The headwinds and tailwinds affecting offshore wind in the Northeast, explained

October 5, 2023 — There’s a lot happening in the offshore wind world right now, especially in the Northeast. And depending on what articles you read, the industry is booming or teetering on financial failure.

The reality is probably somewhere in between. There are headwinds and tailwinds, producing what one person in the industry described as “whiplash in headlines.”

Making sense of it all can be tough. But the stakes are high: Climate change is happening and electricity demand in the region is projected to rise precipitously over the next decade as people buy electric vehicles and heat pumps.

Several New England states, plus New York and New Jersey, are counting on offshore wind to help meet their decarbonization and electrification goals — not to mention banking on the industry to create clean energy jobs and revitalize once-thriving port cities like New Bedford and New London.

A year and a half ago, things looked rosy for offshore wind. States signed 20-year contracts for cheap electricity. Companies announced or started to build manufacturing facilities to help create a domestic supply chain for the industry. Even the Cape Wind controversy of the 2010s seemed more and more like a hiccup in the story of the American offshore wind revolution.

But then came a global inflation crisis, new supply chain disruptions and a growing movement of people calling for a pause on offshore wind development as dead humpback whales washed up on beaches.

Read the full article at wbur

More whales are dying. Conspiracies are leading to threats against the rescue teams

October 4, 2023 — For the past seven years, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service has been monitoring a spike in whale strandings along the entire East Coast.

The agency has declared the ongoing situation an “unusual mortality event,” or UME, for humpback whales. More than 200 humpback strandings have been reported since 2016 along the eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Department says it has conducted partial or full necropsy examinations on about half the whales, with 40 per cent of those examinations showing evidence of human interaction, such as entanglement or ship strikes.

But theories about offshore wind energy projects contributing to the deaths have risen alongside the strandings, despite the NOAA rejecting those claims.

Read the full article at Calgary Herald

U.S. offshore wind slammed by runaway costs

September 11, 2023 — The U.S. offshore wind industry, banking on a big boost from the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, has found itself face-to-face with a major hurdle that’s been right there in the name all along: inflation.

In fact, the law might even be making it worse.

More than 10 gigawatts of offshore wind projects along the U.S. East Coast – the equivalent of roughly 10 nuclear power reactors – are at serious risk as higher costs force developers to re-crunch the numbers for proposals originally modeled years ago, before a run-up in interest rates and material costs. Orsted, the Danish wind giant, said this week it’s prepared to walk away from projects unless it gets even more government aid. Other developers are already paying tens of millions in penalties to exit contracts they say no longer make financial sense.

“It’s pretty evident that inflationary pressures have blunted the impact” of the IRA, said Josh Price, a director with Capstone, a Washington-based research group. “It wasn’t a silver bullet.”

Orsted’s warnings are the most concrete example yet of the limits of the IRA, which was hailed as a key driver for America’s nascent offshore wind industry. While the law provides at least $370 billion in grants, tax credits, and other incentives for climate and clean energy projects, that’s proving no match for rising inflation and borrowing costs. And by dangling higher incentives for companies sourcing U.S.-made parts, it’s fueling demand before the domestic supply chain catches up, driving prices higher still.

Read the full article at the Portland Press Herald

As US East Coast ramps up offshore wind power projects, much remains unknown

September 11, 2023 — As the U.S. races to build offshore wind power projects, transforming coastlines from Maine to South Carolina, much remains unknown about how the facilities could affect the environment.

And that worries some people, particularly those who depend on the sea for their livelihoods.

“We don’t have the science to know what the impact will be,” said Jim Hutchinson, managing editor of The Fisherman magazine in New Jersey. “The attitude has been, ‘Build it and we’ll figure it out.’”

Read the full article at Associated Press

Why the Gulf of Mexico’s first offshore wind auction wasn’t a smash hit

August 30, 2023 — The Biden administration on Tuesday received a top bid of $5.6 million during the first-ever auction of offshore wind development rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

German energy giant RWE placed the highest bid for a 102,500-acre swath of water off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, which has the potential to host 1.24 gigawatts’ worth of offshore wind capacity. Two other lease areas near Galveston, Texas didn’t receive any bids.

The lease sale is an important step toward building clean energy projects in a region that has long been dominated by offshore oil and gas production. Wind turbines are already spinning off the East Coast and more are being installed; meanwhile, floating offshore wind farms are being planned for California’s coastal waters. This week’s auction officially brings the emerging U.S. offshore wind industry to Gulf waters.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Fishermen, activists protesting offshore wind projects on the East Coast: ‘A manmade environmental disaster’

August 8, 2023 — Critics are sounding the alarm on the ecological consequences of the Biden administration’s green energy agenda, specifically the increase marine wildlife deaths in conjunction with offshore wind farms.

Activists along with local fishermen are particularly concerned about the rise in whale and dolphin beaching.

“What we’re seeing is a failure to properly manage the situation,” Rhode Island fisherman Chris Brown said on “The Bottom Line” Wednesday.

“The whales have been migrating from their southern stations during the spring up through the mid-Atlantic region, and they didn’t even slow down the acoustic carpet bombing. And as a result, the Atlantic was littered with the dead whales and dolphins and sharks. There doesn’t seem to be any environmental concern. This is a manmade environmental disaster that’s unfolding. I expect that it will half a whale population in 10 years and probably the same for our fish.”

So far this year, more than 30 dead whales and 30 dead dolphins have washed up on the East Coast.

Brown is among those protesting and calling on leadership to consider the consequences of such an aggressive green energy push.

Other activists including the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) have staged protests at offshore wind farms such as the South Fork Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

Read the full article at Fox Business

Top officials warned Biden admin about dangers wind energy projects pose to fishing industry, letter shows

April 25, 2023 — The executive directors of three federally established fishery councils along the East Coast expressed concern last year about the threats posed by offshore wind energy projects.

In an Aug. 22 letter to former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Amanda Lefton, the three officials — who respectively lead the New England, Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils — expressed concern about current processes for approving offshore wind development. They also made a series of recommendations to help the federal government mitigate impacts on fisheries.

“As we have stated in several past comment letters to BOEM, we are very concerned about the cumulative impacts of multiple wind energy projects on the fisheries we manage,” they stated in the letter. “The multiple wind energy projects planned along the east coast will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries.”

“The synergistic effects of multiple projects may be more than additive and this may not be sufficiently identified in project-specific documents; therefore, losses may be undercompensated by taking a project-by-project approach,” they continued.

Read the full article at Fox News

US East Coast surf clam fishery deemed “robust”

April 10, 2023 — Atlantic surf clams have been found to be abundant and not at risk of being overfished, according to a new study from the U.S. Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS)

SCEMFIS is a collaboration of academic and professional researchers convened through university partners including the University of Southern Mississippi, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and the College of William and Mary.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource