November 3, 2023 — Danish energy developer Orsted A/S declared Tuesday that it and Eversource Energy LLC are committed to the 704-megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island, a “final investment decision” that came the same day Orsted scrapped two large offshore wind projects off the coast of New Jersey.
MASSACHUSETTS: Can a shellfishing license go to a company? Proposals spark controversy on Cape Cod
November 2, 2023 — On a sandbar just off the coast of Barnstable one recent windy morning, Corey Hendricks picked up a metal mesh bag. It’s one of 125 large bags laid out, all full of young oysters.
“Once they get big enough like this, they’re going to go pretty much straight in the cage,” he said.
Hendricks poured the oysters from the bag into one of 100 cages lined up on the sandbar, then evenly spread out the shellfish to line the bottom.
This setup doesn’t look like the typical image of a farm, but that’s what it is: instead of agriculture, it’s aquaculture. Hendricks said the changing tides jostle the oysters and help them grow.
His company is called Duck Island Oysters, and his farm is 2 acres of offshore public land controlled by the town of Barnstable.
“I have roughly a half a million oysters,” Hendricks said. “And last year we planted 200,000 quahogs. This year another 200,000.”
Shellfishermen in Massachusetts farmed nearly $37 million worth of oysters and quahogs in 2022. Unlike other fisheries, shellfishing is regulated locally by individual cities and towns. But in some Cape communities, there’s been a hot debate over changing those regulations and what it would mean for the future of the industry.
National Fisherman Highliner: Maggie Raymond
October 31, 2o23 — Maggie Raymond’s fishing career spans the trajectory of New England groundfish – from the good times of the 1980s, to helping fishermen and managers navigate brutal conflicts and challenges as the fleet moved to days-at-sea management and organizing into sectors.
The former executive director of the Associated Fisheries of Maine, Raymond, 70, of South Berwick, Maine, became essential to the industry and New England Fishery Management Council’s efforts to stabilize fishing communities during a traumatic era.
“Maggie helped people navigate these tumultuous changes and served as an invaluable conduit to explain the science and management implications to fishermen. She was a fierce advocate for industry interests.” said council chairman Eric Reid when Raymond was presented with the council’s 2022 Janice M. Plante Award for Excellence.
While working with the New England council over a quarter-century, Raymond also has been a longtime board member of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum. As a member of the Maine Fishermen’s Wives Association, she was active in effort to promote consumers’ awareness of seafood values and Maine’s fisheries.
A ‘whole way of life’ at risk as warming waters change Maine’s lobster fishing
October 30, 2023 — Lobsterwoman Krista Tripp doesn’t need a scientist to tell her the normally cold waters off the coast of Maine are warming. The submersible thermometer she takes on every fishing trip proves that.
But it’s not just the warmer water that’s changing fishing here on the rocky coast of northern New England. Heavy rains are lowering the ocean’s salinity. And warm-water fish that don’t belong keep showing up.
“You can tell the water’s changing, and we’re getting new species,” says Tripp, 38. “People are posting fish they catch on Facebook and asking ‘What’s this?’ And they’re tropical fish.'”
Tripp started lobstering at her grandfather’s knee, where she learned to bait traps. She still tries to fish some of his old favorite spots near to shore, but increasingly she’s plumbing the waters right at the edge of where her permit allows, three miles offshore.
Her grandfather trapped lobster his whole life, and now Tripp, like her father before her, carries on that legacy. For generations, lobstering has helped define this slice of northern New England, where the cold Atlantic waters have been home to the species that helped build a young United States: cod, whales, lobster.
But what Tripp sees from the Shearwater’s wheelhouse is just one part of a larger problem facing the United States, as climate change warms the world’s oceans and transforms the creatures that live in them. As the oceans get hotter, sea life adapts, and many species that used to be easily fished close to land are fleeing to colder, deeper waters.
Aquaculture debate reignited as towns consider moratoriums
October 30, 2023 — While concerns about fish farming in Maine have been fairly muted for some time in areas like Eastport and Lubec, where it began in the 1980s, towns along the coast that have been the focus of recent industrial-scale projects, including Jonesport, Gouldsboro, Bucksport and Belfast, have been seeing intense debates.
Prompted by those proposals, a group called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation has been working to have municipalities enact moratoriums and ordinances limiting any large-scale proposals.
While eight municipalities have now passed moratoriums, the state has stepped in, questioning if they have the right to do so, since the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) has exclusive jurisdiction to lease state waters for aquaculture.
However, both the foundation and some towns are questioning that exclusive authority.
Two municipalities, Cutler and Waldoboro, have approved ordinances regulating aquaculture, and the other towns that have approved moratoriums are Machiasport, Beals, Roque Bluffs, Winter Harbor, Penobscot and South Bristol. Cutler approved its ordinance, which limits aquaculture leases to a half acre, in November 2022. Waldoboro’s ordinance does not allow for any aquaculture leases.
Crystal Canney, executive director of Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, says the moratoriums, which are for six months and can be renewed multiple times, allow towns the time to develop and approve an ordinance.
The foundation is providing municipalities with possible language both for moratoriums on any new large-scale aquaculture projects and for municipal ordinances that would require a permit from the town’s planning board before an aquaculture facility could be built.
“We provide the towns with proposed moratorium and ordinance wording, but we leave it up to the towns on how to word them,” Canney said. The moratoriums provide “breathing room” so that towns can develop an aquaculture ordinance.
Canney noted that “the majority of the concern is Downeast,” and numerous other municipalities have been approached by the group, including Eastport and Lubec, which were not interested in pursuing a moratorium or ordinance. She points out that the foundation is targeting only large-scale aquaculture projects.
“We are not against owner/operated aquaculture that’s properly sited,” she said.
The foundation’s main concerns are both competition with fishermen for space and environmental effects of aquaculture. According to its website, Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage believes that “fishermen and marine harvesters are losing bottom and fishing space to large aquaculture leases.”
The website states, “We are working to ensure proper state regulations are in place to prevent a rapid, unplanned expansion of aquaculture in Maine. Conflicts are arising up and down the Maine coast for the lobstering, marine harvesters and boating communities. We must find a way to co‑exist without hurting the environment or fisheries that have been well managed and sustained for generations.”
Canney noted it’s possible for an aquaculture company to be able to lease 1,000 acres of state waters, since they can have up to 10 leases of up to 100 acres each.
Avangrid avoids $1 billion write-off after ending plans to build CT’s Park City Wind farm
October 28, 2023 — Avangrid reported Thursday that in canceling its Park City Wind farm for Connecticut, it sidestepped more than $1 billion in write-offs as projected costs outstripped revenue it expected under a power purchase agreement with the state.
Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spain-based Iberdrola, has its headquarters in Orange. Avangrid’s subsidiaries include United Illuminating, which owns power lines that provide electricity in the Bridgeport and New Haven metropolitan areas. UI sued the state in September after regulators denied a rate increase it had sought.
Avangrid also owns Central Maine Power, which has its headquarters in Auburn where officials issued a “shelter in place” advisory after the overnight mass shootings in adjacent Lewiston. Just after 9 a.m. on Thursday, CMP alerted customers it would coordinate with local law enforcement in responding to any outages Thursday morning.
“We have many Central Maine Power employees in Lewiston and all over Maine who are likely severely impacted by this horrible act of senseless violence,” said Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra, speaking Thursday morning on a conference call with investment analysts. “We are monitoring the situation very closely and we are prepared to provide every resource available to our employees and our affected communities. Our hearts and thoughts from all of us at CMP, Avangrid and Iberdrola are with the Lewiston community in this difficult time.”
Avangrid unilaterally pulled the plug on the Park City Wind farm several weeks ago, as the cost of construction outstripped revenue projections from a power purchase agreement with the state of Connecticut. The companies had aimed to start construction by 2026.
In August, Avangrid restarted construction of a transmission line through Maine to feed electricity to the New England grid from hydropower plants in Canada, after a court decision in its favor. At 1,200 megawatts, the New England Clean Energy Connect lines would deliver 50 percent more power than Park City Wind at optimal wind conditions.
MAINE: Lobster dealers hope for a fall surge
October 26, 2023 — Steamed, boiled, broiled or baked under hot coals and sand or shipped to restaurants and processors hundreds or thousands of miles away, lobster remains a major driver of Maine’s economy, contributing more than $1 billion each year.
And lobstermen’s earnings accounted for more than a third of that amount last year — $388 million, according to preliminary data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) — bolstering local communities up and down the coast.
This year, boat prices are high but the catch is down, dealers say. Supply is meeting demand but the demand is lower than last year. While at least one local seafood retailer had a great summer, wholesale dealers’ reports are unenthusiastic. Both lobstermen and dealers are keeping fingers crossed for a big fall surge in catch.
With the state’s commercial fishery granted a six-year reprieve in December from new federal regulations that many industry voices said would decimate the fishery, the 2023 season has focused on traditional concerns, such as supply, demand, prices and bait.
“The price is up but the catch is down, and we’ve had horrible weather,” said Susan Soper, general manager of Winter Harbor Lobster Co-op. “Our retail sales were almost 60 percent down.”
Delano: Biden administration won’t leave lobstermen alone
October 26, 2023 — Lawmakers and a federal appeals court last year defeated a federal plan to save endangered whales by eradicating New England’s lobster industry. With those plans undone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is crafting a workaround scheme to regulate lobstermen out of the fishery.
Recent years have been brutal going for lobstermen, such that the survival of our trade is highly uncertain. Lobstermen are at once negotiating higher fuel costs, higher bait costs, higher shipping costs, and an agitation campaign from dark money nonprofits trained on major buyers of Maine lobster products. NOAA’s new regulatory plan is poised to decimate our inventory.
NOAA’s new plan – a rule promulgated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act – would expand an existing restricted area, where lobster fishing is banned for three months each year. The scope of the expansion is unclear as of this writing, but any expansion is unwelcome as a matter of precedent and a practical business matter.
As with the previous plan, NOAA is allegedly crafting its new rule to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whale. The agency maintains vessel strikes and entanglements with lobster gear are killing these marine mammals.
Read the full article at the Boston Herald
Native fishermen from US claim Canada’s DFO illegally removed lobster traps
October 24, 2023 — Native fishermen in the U.S. state of Maine claim officials with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently took unwarranted and unauthorized action against them.
According to Henry Bear – past general manager of the Maliseet Nation’s commercial fishing fleet on Grand Manan Island, and past Maliseet Tribal Representative to the Maine House of Representatives – the DFO took unwarranted action against Maine-based Passamaquoddy and Maliseet fishermen by confiscating lobster traps. The fishermen were lobstering in Canadian waters of the Saint Croix River and of Passamaquoddy Bay – which form part of the border between New Brunswick, Canada and Maine in the U.S. – when the DFO reportedly confiscated the traps.
MAINE: ‘Crucial’ fishing grounds excluded from federal offshore wind energy draft plan for Maine
October 23, 2023 — As Maine moves forward with future goals of offshore wind energy development, multiple stakeholders are praising the decision by a federal agency to exclude the majority of Gulf of Maine fishing grounds, known as Lobster Management Area 1, from its development proposal.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released the draft on Thursday and the plan is now open for public review and comment. The draft of the Wind Energy Area covers more than 3.5 million acres off the shore of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, according to an agency release. The areas included range from 23 to 120 miles off the coast.
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