Saving Seafood

East Coast congressmen seek NOAA response on scientists’ offshore wind advice

March 16, 2023 — Four East Coast congressmen asked top Biden administration officials how their agencies responded to a May 2022 scientific recommendation for wider buffer areas around offshore wind projects to protect endangered whales.

In a joint letter Tuesday Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith, both R-NJ, Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Andy Harris, R-Md., sought answers from leadership of the Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The request announced by Van Drew is a scene-setter for the southern New Jersey congressman’s March 16 public hearing in Wildwood, N.J., billed by Van Drew’s office as “an examination into offshore wind industrialization.”

It could be the first of Congressional hearings by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives into how the Biden administration is permitting offshore wind developments.

“There have been more than twenty whale deaths in just the past three months, an unprecedented number, yet this administration does not bat an eye,” Van Drew said Tuesday. “Despite calls for investigations as to why endangered whales keep washing up on our shores, this administration instead has decided to expand offshore wind development, allocating $60 million for projects in President Biden’s budget proposal.”

Offshore wind critics in Van Drew’s New Jersey coastal district have pointed to this winter’s strandings of humpback whales – a resurgent species along the Atlantic coast, unlike the highly endangered right whales – in demanding a moratorium on surveys to plan offshore wind projects off New Jersey.

They contend noise from geotechnical survey vessels may have disoriented the whales before their deaths, several determined by necropsy to have been caused by vessel strikes. NOAA officials reject those claims, saying the humpback strandings are part of a larger “unusual mortality event” that has been tracked since 2016.

So far this winter’s toll has included one right whale, a 20-year-old male washed up in Virginia, the apparent victim of a vessel strike.

The congressmen’s letter focuses on a May 2022 letter to BOEM from Sean Hayes, chief of protected species for NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full release at the National Fisherman

Speeding boats, fishing gear the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale deaths, conservation experts say

March 13, 2023 — A top ocean conservation group in the country is calling on the feds to enforce boat speed limits along the Atlantic coast and issue stronger protections to prevent more deaths of North Atlantic right whales.

The group Oceana released an analysis Thursday that found hundreds of boats had sped through mandatory and voluntary slow zones designed to protect the critically endangered species in the Virginia Beach area in the weeks leading up to a North Atlantic right whale death.

There are just 340 right whales left in the world today, a number that has declined by 25% over the past decade, according to conservation scientists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined blunt force traumatic injuries as the cause of death of the 20-year-old male right whale. The injuries mirrored those of a boat strike, a leading threat to such whales.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

U.S. refuses calls for immediate protection of North Atlantic right whales

January 26, 2023 — The U.S. government has denied two petitions to immediately protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales during the species’ calving season, raising concerns that this population of whales will continue to decline without intervention. There are currently about 340 of these whales left, making them one of the most threatened cetaceans in the world.

The two petitions — one filed by a consortium of NGOs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), and the other by the NGO Oceana — asked the U.S. government to provide emergency protection for North Atlantic whales (Eubalaena glacialis). They called for three measures aimed to reduce vessel collision, a leading cause of death for these animals. The proposed rules included establishing speed limits for ships in designated coastal zones between North Carolina and Florida during the calving season; requiring speed reductions outside of these zones when a single whale or a mother-and-calf pair is spotted; and making such rules applicable for vessels 35 feet (about 11 meters) in length and longer.

There are already some seasonal speed zones on the southeast U.S. coast, but experts say they’re not big enough to encompass the species’ entire range, especially as climate change alters the whales’ movements. Additionally, vessels don’t need to slow down outside these zones unless in the presence of three individual whales, and the current rules only apply to vessels larger than 65 feet, or about 20 meters. However, as experts point out, smaller vessels have been responsible for right whale deaths, as seen in a collision between a 54-foot (16.5-m) sportfishing yacht and a calf and mother off St. Augustine, Florida, in February 2021. The calf’s dead body washed onto the beach the next day, and the mother, known to researchers as Infinity, hasn’t been seen again.

Read the full article at Mongabay

14 whale deaths along US East Coast remain a mystery

January 24, 2023 — Local officials and environmentalists are trying to find out what is behind the mysterious death of 14 whales along the US east coast since 1 December.

Some are blaming the deaths on the development of an offshore wind farm in the area.

Officials, however, say they have found no evidence to suggest wind farms are to blame.

Since 2016, they have been tracking the “unusual mortality” of humpback whales along the eastern shores.

Over the past six years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied 178 dead humpback whales from Florida to Maine.

NOAA performed necropsies on about half the whales and found that of those, 40% of the deaths were caused by human interaction, either being caught in fishing gear or struck by vessels.

Sperm whales, an endangered species, have also been found dead along the eastern coasts.

The most recent death of a humpback whale, which washed ashore in Maryland on 16 January, prompted a press conference by NOAA officials and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), as it came amid mounting concerns a local wind farm development was to blame.

Read the full article at BBC News

America’s Scallop Harvest Projected to Decline Again in 2022

June 28, 2022 — America’s scallop fishing industry will continue to decline in catch into next year due to a decrease in the availability of the oft-pricy shellfish off the East Coast, federal regulators say.

The decline in scallops is happening as prices for the shellfish, one of the most lucrative seafoods in America, has increased amid inflation and fluctuations in catch. Seafood counters that sold scallops for $20 per pound to customers two years ago often sell them for $25 per pound or more now.

U.S. scallop fishers harvested more than 60 million pounds of scallops in 2019, but the catch has declined since, and fishers were projected to harvest about 40 million pounds of scallops in the 2021 fishing year. That number is projected to fall to 34 million pounds in the 2022 fishing year, which started this spring, according to the New England Fishery Management Council.

Read the full story at U.S. News & World Report

 

Fisheries Managers Vote to Take Action on Rockfish Overfishing

May 1, 2019 — Changes are coming to the East Coast striped bass fishing rules in response to overfishing. But what changes, exactly? The public will have a chance to weigh in.

On Tuesday the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) unanimously approved a number of options to reduce striped bass fishing mortality along the Atlantic coast and in the Chesapeake Bay. The proposal, an addendum to the existing striper management plan, is necessary due to an alarming decline in the population of this iconic sport fish, as previously reported by Bay Bulletin’s Wild Chesapeake column.

Fisheries biologists have determined that rockfish are being over-fished, which triggers action to make coast-wide changes prior to the 2020 fishing season.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

Hearings on Plan to Protect Spawning Fish off New England

February 25, 2019 –Interstate fishing regulators are holding hearings on the East Coast about a plan to protect herring off of New England when the fish are spawning.

Herring are among the most important fish in the Atlantic Ocean because of their role in the food chain and commercial value. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s considering measures designed to protect spawning herring in the inshore Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at NBC 10 Boston

Deep cut for fishermen of herring amid population loss

February 8, 2019 —  Fishermen of an important species of lobster bait will have to contend with a deep cut in quota this year due to concerns about the fish’s population.

Atlantic herring are the source of a major fishery on the East Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday that it’s cutting this year’s herring quota from nearly 110 million pounds to about 33 million pounds.

Read the full story at WRAL

East Coast of U.S. Emerging Into a Hotbed for Offshore Wind

February 7, 2018 — Atlantic coast states might be protesting President Trump’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling, but they’re increasingly embracing a different kind of seaborne energy: wind.

States bordering the outer continental shelf are looking for carbon-free electricity, even as the Trump administration rolls back rules requiring it.

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that his state will aim for 3,500 megawatts of installed offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 1 million homes. Massachusetts has a goal to build 1,600 MW of offshore wind power by 2027, and New York has committed to 2,400 MW by 2030.

At the same time, wind technology is quickly advancing, thanks to its popularity in Europe. Ten countries across Europe had deployed 12,600 MW of offshore wind power by the end of 2016. In the United States, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued 13 wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast. In late 2016, the first offshore wind farm in the United States came online about 4 miles off the coast of Block Island, R.I.

It’s unclear how the growth in offshore wind might be affected by Trump’s plan to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas drilling.

But there are hints that the two types of development could come into contact on the open water.

According to BOEM’s draft proposed 2019-24 offshore oil and gas leasing plan, any drilling off the Atlantic Seaboard would have to be “coordinated” with current and future offshore wind development. The agency predicts that more wind projects are likely to be built between 2019 and 2024, when oil and gas lease sales are slated to be held.

Experts said it’s unlikely there would be direct competition for the same slice of ocean between the two industries. But that’s a hard question to answer.

Kevin Book, managing director of research for ClearView Energy Partners LLC, said it’s too early to know how offshore wind and oil and gas development might interact off the East Coast. Historically, offshore wind has been a nascent industry, and no one has drilled for oil in the Atlantic for decades. It’s been so long that developers have little idea what type of oil reserves lie under the sea, or if oil companies will want to tap them.

Read the full story from Scientific American/E&E news at IEEFA

 

Ed Markey: Plan will spur ‘huge fight’ over offshore energy drilling

January 9, 2018 — BOSTON — The state’s environment, tourism and fishing industry could be threatened by President Donald Trump’s plan to open up more coastal areas to offshore drilling, according to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who said the proposal puts “nearly every single mile of coastline in the United States in the crosshairs of an oil spill.”

“Nothing is sacred,” Markey told reporters from the Kennedy Federal Building. “All of the United States is going to be open for the oil industry to be able to drill. That is something that the American people will want to have resolved on the floor of the House and Senate, and that is something that I am going to guarantee him that he will see. This is going to be a huge fight across our country.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday announced a proposal that would make more than 90 percent of the national outer continental shelf available for oil and gas exploration. Currently, 94 percent of federal offshore acreage is off-limits, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

The 380-page draft plan includes a note that Gov. Charlie Baker does not “support inclusion of areas adjacent to Massachusetts,” and Attorney General Maura Healey “strongly opposes opening up any of the Atlantic or any other new areas to oil and gas leasing.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates there are 89.9 billion barrels of oil and 327.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that have yet to be discovered on the outer continental shelf, including 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 38.2 cubic feet in the Atlantic portion of the shelf.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, Atlantic oil and natural gas development could deliver $51 billion in new government revenue, nearly 280,000 jobs and 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day for domestic energy production by 2035.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times