February 28, 2024 — A few local business owners in Gloucester are hoping to expand the image of who is a fisherman. Melissa and Donna Marshall are two of those women. They own Cape Ann Fresh Catch, the largest community-supported fishery in the country. Donna started working with the CSF in 2009 when it was founded. When Melissa took the reins, she expanded Cape Ann Fresh Catch to include a smokehouse, Twin Light Smokehouse. Smoking fish is another way that the CSF can reduce waste.
MAINE: Maine’s lobster fishermen struggle with efforts to save right whales
February 28, 2024 — Willis Spear stands in the backyard of his Yarmouth, Maine home. Behind him are dozens of yellow and green lobster traps. Spear, 67, spends most of the winter preparing these traps to be deployed in the Gulf of Maine come April. It’s a task this lifelong lobster fisherman has carried out each year since he was a child.
“The water gives us life,” Spear said on an unusually warm winter day in late February.
Over the last decade, lobster fishermen in Maine have faced increasingly stronger financial headwinds — from the price of fuel to the revenue they are receiving for the lobster themselves. The lobster-fishing industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars for Maine’s economy each year.
“It’s been a difficult last couple of years. Some of my friends have dropped out altogether. Prices are going up but lobster prices are stuck at 1970s prices,” Spear said.
Possibility Of Another Offshore Wind Farm Gaining Steam
February 28, 2024 — A second offshore wind farm is one step closer to becoming a reality and yes, it would be in the vicinity of Nantucket.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced on Monday that they have completed an environmental review of the proposed New England Wind project – which would be just 24 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket. BOEM’s decision whether to approve the project or not will be no earlier than April 2024.
The review was completed by BOEM in support of the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.
BOEM estimates the proposed project would generate up to 2,600 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes with clean, renewable energy.
“Diverse public input was essential to BOEM’s careful and thorough analysis of the environmental impact of the proposed New England Wind project,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. “This document demonstrates the administration’s steady progress towards attaining clean energy goals that will better the lives of Americans now and in the future.”
He’s the One Who Got Away: New Documentary Tells the Ultimate Fish Story
February 28, 2024 — As a commercial fisherman based in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Michael Packard is accustomed to bringing home the bounty of Cape Cod’s waters. One of the few remaining (if not the very last) of the area’s diving lobstermen, instead of setting traps, Packard dons a wet suit, mask, fins and oxygen tanks to pursue his quarry by hand where it lives on the ocean floor.
But in June 2021, there was a dramatic reversal of fortune when Packard, the predator, became Packard, the prey, as he was hunting for lobsters. That’s when a humpback whale came upon the fisherman and scooped him up in its massive jaws. Packard’s world suddenly turned pitch black as the whale closed its mouth around him. From the deck of Packard’s boat, the Ja’n J, Josiah Mayo, his first mate and friend, had no idea what had happened — until the moment he saw Packard get spat out by the whale and launched through the air. Though he had been inside the whale for roughly 30 seconds, for Packard, it must have felt like an eternity.
Packard’s trip inside the whale made international news. To many, it sounded like an unbelievable fish story, and the modern day Jonah had serious doubters and detractors. But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker David Abel was not one of them. He believed Packard, and in his story, which he wrote for The Boston Globe, he also saw the makings of a documentary film.
“In the Whale,” Abel’s new documentary, recounts the fantastical events surrounding Michael Packard on that June day in 2021. But the documentary also delves into the humble seafaring life of the lobsterman and his family, detailing what they had been through, both before and since that fateful day. “In the Whale” will have its Long Island premiere at 7 p.m. this Saturday at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Abel, a New York native, will be on hand to take part in a Q&A and discussion following the screening.
Abel has been a reporter for 25 years at The Boston Globe, where he covers climate change and environmental issues. Stories on New England’s fisheries, like the one about Michael Packard, are also firmly part of his beat. But in recent years, Abel has also become an accomplished filmmaker, and he explained in a recent interview how that part of his career came into focus.
Read the full article at 27 East
BOEM Releases Final Environmental Report as New England Wind Nears Approval
February 27, 2024 — The U.S. offshore wind energy sector continues to develop momentum as the Biden administration continues forward with its clean energy agenda. In the latest development, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) completed its environmental review of the proposed New England Wind project offshore Massachusetts. This month, BOEM completed this review as well as approved the construction plan for Empire Wind, and defined the Oregon offshore wind area.
Today’s announcement highlights the time involved in the review process which several projects have now completed. The first lease for the site originally known as Vineyard Wind South was awarded in 2015 but in 2021 was transferred by Avangrid to Park City Wind and renamed New England Wind. The comment period on the draft environmental impact statement closed a year ago.
BOEM has completed the process and will publish the final statement at the end of this week. They note that they considered 776 comments received when developing the Final EIS for this project. The final environmental impact statement (Final EIS) analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the activities laid out in the New England Wind project’s construction and operations plan and reasonable alternatives.
MAINE: Maine Shaken by High-Stakes Offshore Wind Port Choice
February 27, 2024 — Maine Governor Janet Mills announced that the state selected a section of state-owned Sears Island reserved for port development to support the floating offshore wind industry. The site selection followed an extensive public stakeholder process led by the Maine Department of Transportation and Maine Port Authority to consider the State’s primary port development options.
However, in former documentation, locals in the community and commercial fishing groups oppose the development of the port and offshore wind altogether.
Sears Island is a 941-acre island off the coast of Searsport. In 2009, Sears Island was, by agreement, divided into two parcels: approximately 601 acres, or two-thirds of the island, was placed in a permanent conservation easement held by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, while the remaining one-third, or approximately 330 acres, was reserved by MaineDOT for future development.
MAINE: Data show fewer baby lobsters but fishermen say ‘eggers’ abound
February 27, 2024 — Lobstermen and the agency that oversees them — the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) — sparred a little over state data on lobster populations that lobstermen said does not reflect what they see when fishing, when the Zone B Lobster Council met Feb. 21 at the Mount Desert Island High School library.
The DMR estimates the number of baby lobsters, called “year of young,” through trawl and ventless trap surveys to project future adult populations and manage the fishery — and to adhere to interstate fishery rules from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), an interstate board managing fisheries for 15 states, including Maine.
Last May, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Board approved a “trigger” measure that would raise the minimum size of legally caught lobsters and, eventually, the size of trap vents when the annual lobster year of young abundance, also called “recruit,” declined by 35 percent.
Larger trap vents allow larger lobsters to escape traps, and a higher minimum size means smaller, previously legal lobsters are thrown back. Both measures are used to help maintain a healthy population.
At the time, it looked like it would take a couple of years to reach that trigger, but instead the trigger came quick, in late 2023, when data showed a 37 percent decline in settlement, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said. He was able to leverage a seven-month delay to implement the trigger until Jan. 1, 2025.
MASSACHUSETTS: 31 right whales seen in shipping lanes off the Massachusetts coast
February 27, 2024 — Authorities are urging boats traveling in shipping lanes off Cape Cod to slow down after 31 North Atlantic right whales were found in the area last week, the New England Aquarium said Monday.
The right whales were discovered in two separate groups by an aerial survey of the Great South Channel, the aquarium said in a press release. The first group of whales surfaced while “feeding about 35 miles east of Nantucket,” and a second group was seen 20 miles east of Chatham.
The Great South Channel overlaps with shipping lanes to and from Boston, and NOAA Fisheries urged ships in the area to travel no faster than 10 knots until March 7 to protect the whales, the aquarium said. The restriction is voluntary.
Right whales are a critically endangered species, with an estimated population around 360.
“These protections are particularly important given the recent loss of two female right whales—one found off of Georgia after being struck by a vessel,” the aquarium said.
Interior advances two New England offshore wind projects
February 26, 2026 — The Biden administration on Monday advanced two massive offshore wind projects off the coast of Massachusetts that have faced economic woes challenging whether they will be built.
The Avangrid projects, Park City Wind and Commonwealth Wind, would be located more than 20 miles off the coast of Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard and just south of the first major offshore wind farm in the U.S., the Vineyard Wind project that is under construction.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Monday released a joint environmental analysis for the projects, which combined could power nearly 1 million homes. The document explores the impacts constructing and operating the large wind farms could have on the environment, marine life like the endangered North Atlantic right whale, and industries like tourism and fishing.
Feds complete environmental review for New England Wind
February 26, 2024 — Another offshore wind project off the coast of the Vineyard is a step closer to coming to fruition.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced in a Monday press release it has completed an environmental review of the proposed New England Wind project, formerly known as Vineyard Wind South.
The agency will issue a record of decision on whether the project is approved no earlier than April, according to the release.
New England Wind is an offshore wind project proposed to be located 20 nautical miles from the southwestern corner of Martha’s Vineyard and about 24 nautical miles from Nantucket. The project is expected to generate 2,600 megawatts of power, which the release states would be enough to power over 900,000 homes.
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