Saving Seafood

Political Interference Blamed for Vineyard Wind Delays

February 18, 2020 — Vineyard Wind is coming to terms with the fact that its wind project is behind schedule, as accusations of political meddling escalate.

On Feb. 7, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released an updated permitting guideline that moved the facility’s likely completion date beyond Jan. 15, 2022 — the day the $2.8 billion project is under contract to begin delivering 400 megawatts of electricity capacity to Massachusetts.

Vineyard Wind is now renegotiating its power-purchase agreement with the three utilities that are buying the electricity.  The company is also in discussions with the Treasury Department about preserving an expiring tax credit.

The delay is being caused by a holdup with BOEM’s environmental impact statement (EIS). A draft of the report was initially expected last year, but after the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declined to endorse the report, it was pushed off until late 2019 or early 2020. Back then several members of Congress from Massachusetts claimed the delay was politically motivated.

Read the full story at EcoRI

The Vineyard Wind project is getting delayed — again

February 12, 2020 — The planned offshore wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard has hit yet another setback.

After receiving notice that federal officials won’t decide on a key permit until more than 16 months later than expected, Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says the project — originally slated to be operational next year — isn’t expected to produce power until sometime beyond 2022.

“We have received updated information from the Department of Interior that indicates the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Vineyard Wind I project will be published later than what was previously anticipated,” Pederson said in a statement Tuesday.

“While we need to analyze what a longer permitting timeline will mean for beginning construction, commercial operation in 2022 is no longer expected,’ he said. “We look forward to the clarity that will come with a final EIS so that Vineyard Wind can deliver this project to Massachusetts and kick off the new US offshore energy industry.”

Read the full story at Boston.com

Erich Stephens leaving Vineyard Wind

December 20, 2019 — Erich Stephens, the public face of Vineyard Wind before it won an offshore wind contract in 2018, is leaving the company.

Vineyard Wind announced Thursday that Stephens, chief development officer and a founding principal of the company, would be departing.

Stephens told The Standard-Times it seemed like the right time to make a transition while the company waits for federal permitting of Vineyard Wind 1, to be located off Martha’s Vineyard, and before things ramp up for its second project in Connecticut.

“It’s really just a personal decision about the positions I want to have in my career,” he said.

Vineyard Wind has grown out of the entrepreneurial phase of its history and become a more mature development company, he said. Stephens said it’s not uncommon for the success of a young company to mean that, “exactly because of its success, it turns into something different in terms of your day-to-day work and responsibility.”

The company has tapped Rachel Pachter, vice president of permitting affairs, to replace him as chief development officer.

Stephens said he is excited about Pachter’s promotion because it allows her to advance her career and maintains continuity for Vineyard Wind.

Stephens has held senior leadership positions in the company, formerly called OffshoreMW, since 2009. Following last year’s selection of Vineyard Wind to build Massachusetts’ first offshore wind farm, he was responsible for pre-construction development.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Authorities locate boat that sunk with 4 fishermen aboard

December 11, 2019 — A fishing vessel that capsized and sank miles off Martha’s Vineyard with four fishermen aboard has been found.

The Leonardo, a 57-foot scalloper based out of New Bedford, was located and identified Sunday morning, according to Massachusetts Environmental Police.

Only one of the four fishermen aboard the Leonardo was rescued since the boat went down on Nov. 24. The other three men, Capt. Gerald Bretal, Mark Cormier and Xavier Vega, are considered lost at sea.

Read the full story at Boston.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Missing New Bedford Fishing Boat Found Submerged Off Martha’s Vineyard

December 10, 2019 — A fishing boat that sunk in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard last month was located Sunday. Massachusetts Environmental Police confirmed the Leonardo was found at the bottom of the ocean using sonar and a remote operated camera.

Three New Bedford based fishermen were lost at sea when the boat was hit by rogue waves on November 24.

“We had no time to get survival gear on, not even a life vest,” lone survivor Ernesto Garcia told WBZ-TV days after he was rescued. “It just happened in a split of a second. There was no chance for nothing except holding your breath.”

Boat captain Gerry Bretal, and fishermen Mark Cormier Jr. and Xavier Vega are presumed dead. Rescue crews suspended the search for the men about 24 hours after the accident.

Read the full story at WBZ

‘Past point of no return’: Lone fisherman who survived shipwreck off Martha’s Vineyard recalls harrowing ordeal

November 29, 2019 — A fisherman who survived a shipwreck off Martha’s Vineyard spoke Tuesday from his hospital bed about the harrowing ordeal, one day after the United States Coast Guard suspended its search for three of his fellow crewmates.

Ernesto Garcia, 50, was aboard the Leonardo — a 56-foot scallop boat — that capsized and sank on Sunday afternoon as nine-foot swells and gusty winds battered the area. He was later rescued by a helicopter crew.

“We caught a rogue sea,” Garcia told 7’s Jonathan Hall. “A wave came across in the opposite direction in which the waves were running.”

Garcia says the boat was equipped with a device that automatically sends an emergency distress signal when it strikes the water but that three survival suits onboard sunk with the boat.

“We had no time. Half the port side of the boat was down in the water,” Garcia recalled. “We were past the point of no return.”

Crewmate Mark Cormier, 35, was with Garcia when the wave hit.

“The boat took a nice roll and flipped,” Garcia said. “He [Cormier] broke away from me and I ended up in some kind of air pocket.”

Read the full story at WHDH

Coast Guard ends search for three missing fishermen from capsized boat off Martha’s Vineyard

November 26, 2019 — Scalloper Samuel Pereira was headed back to State Pier on Saturday morning when his boat passed the Leonardo heading out to sea. Over the radio, he said, the two skippers chatted briefly about the forecast, which was predicting fierce conditions.

“The weather was no good for me, because I have a small boat,” Pereira recalled Monday. “He knew it was going to be [sloppy]. But he said he was going to fish slow.”

It was the last Pereira would hear from the boat, a scalloper, or its captain. On Monday, the Coast Guard suspended its search off Martha’s Vineyard for three fishermen missing from the 56-foot Leonardo, which apparently capsized 24 nautical miles from the Vineyard and sank Sunday, with four aboard.

“We will no longer be searching unless a new development happens . . . meaning something is reported that would necessitate reasonable efforts to continue,” said Petty Officer Zachary Hupp, a Coast Guard spokesman.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTES: Cape fishermen celebrate new trawling restrictions

November 26, 2019 — In 2002, when Peter Baker first voiced his opposition to the large herring trawlers towing even larger nets off the beaches of Cape Cod, he didn’t think it would take 17 years to get a ban on what he and others saw as a return to the industrialized fishing that had wiped out New England herring, mackerel and menhaden in the 1970s before the U.S. pushed the foreign fleet 200 miles offshore in 1976.

Last week, the efforts of local fishermen, boards of selectmen, voters, environmental groups and state legislators who spoke out against the midwater trawl herring fishery finally paid off with a federal restriction on large herring vessels fishing within 12 miles of the coast from the Canadian border to Connecticut, and within 20 miles of shore along the Outer Cape coastline south to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.

“This is the culmination of a decade and a half of hard work,” said Baker, who is the director of marine conservation work in New England and Atlantic Canada for the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Owner of New Bedford vessel capsized off Martha’s Vineyard fears 3 crew members perished

November 25, 2019 — The owner of a scalloping vessel that capsized and sank in choppy seas southwest of Martha’s Vineyard on Sunday afternoon said the single fisherman found in a lifeboat a few hours after a distress signal was sent is in the hospital.

“The other three fishermen are presumed lost,” Luis Martins, owner of the fishing vessel Leonardo, said Monday morning. “That’s all I can say.”

He declined to provide any names of the crew members.

Coast Guard crews from Air Station Cape Cod were continuing the search for the three missing fishermen Monday morning, with the 87-foot cutter Cobia and 270-foot cutter Escanaba scouring the waters off Martha’s Vineyard while a Jayhawk helicopter searched from the air.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Turbine spacing unites offshore wind executives

November 21, 2019 — Executives representing the offshore leaseholders off Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket announced their joint support for a one-nautical-mile width between all their proposed wind turbines.

The executives also announced agreement on an east-west orientation of the wind turbine rows. Orsted North America president Thomas Brostrom, Equinor Wind US president Christer af Geijerstam, Eversource Energy-enterprise energy strategy executive vice president Leon Oliver, Mayflower Wind president John Hartnet, and Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Thaaning Pedersen signed a letter to the U.S. Coast Guard advocating for the one-nautical-mile spacing and east-west configuration. The letter was accompanied by a report executed by W.F. Baird & Associates Ltd. that concludes such distancing and orientation of turbines is advantageous.

For Vineyard Wind, the width is a mile short of what it previously supported. As The Times reported in December 2018, Vineyard Wind was in support of two-mile transit corridors, while fishermen pushed for four-mile corridors. However, the executives contend in their letter that the widths are “responsive to fishermen’s requests.” Among other reasons, fishermen in Rhode Island and Massachusetts have pushed for wider navigation spaces between wind turbines for safety reasons, due to the length of mobile gear some fishing vessels trail. The executives state the width they propose addresses mobile gear concerns.

In a statement to The Times, Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Rhode Island’s Seafreeze Ltd. and a board member of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), found the executives’ announcement foreseeable, and as evidence they may not be taking fishing industry input to heart.

Read the full story at the Martha’s Vineyard Times