Saving Seafood

Early projections suggest Northeast US may get lower scallop quota in 2025

October 9, 2024 — The latest scientific surveys of scallop fishing areas in the Northeast U.S. show biomass decreased from 2023 to 2024 – which will likely result in a lower total allowable catch in 2025.

The scallop fishery in the Northeast U.S. is one of the most valuable fisheries in the country and has been grappling with lower quotas since a massive 2019 season saw the fishery land over 60 million pounds. That season was largely thanks to a massive recruitment event that occurred in the 2012 to 2013 scallop class, but now, those scallops have either been fished or aged out of the fishery.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Blade collapse, New York launch and New Jersey research show uneven progress of offshore wind

July 18, 2024 — Three events Wednesday highlighted the uneven progress of the offshore wind industry in the Northeast, including the start of a major project in New York, research aimed at preventing environmental damage in New Jersey, and a temporary shutdown of a wind farm in Massachusetts after a broken turbine blade washed ashore on a famous beach.

The federal government ordered a wind farm operator off the coast of Nantucket in Massachusetts to suspend operations while cleanup continues after a wind turbine blade fell into the water, broke apart, and washed up on beaches at the popular vacation spot.

Vineyard Wind said Wednesday that it has removed 17 cubic yards of debris, enough to fill more than six truckloads, along with several larger pieces that washed ashore. The debris was mostly non-toxic fiberglass fragments ranging in size from small pieces to larger sections, typically green or white.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Ørsted agrees to acquire Eversource’s 50% share of Sunrise Wind project

January 30, 2024 — Danish company Ørsted has agreed to acquire utility company Eversource Energy’s 50% stake in a 924-megawatt offshore wind farm in New York, Sunrise Wind.

Eversource, based in Hartford and Boston, previously announced that it would divest its 50% ownership stake in three offshore wind projects in New York and Connecticut, including Sunrise Wind.

As a result, Eversource will take a 2023 fourth-quarter charge of up to $1.6 billion.

Read the full article at Hartford Business 

Governors warn Biden offshore wind projects ‘increasingly at risk of failing

September 19, 2023 — Governors of six Northeast states are asking the Biden administration to boost federal tax credits for offshore wind developers, give their states a share of revenue from offshore energy leases and hasten permitting for the projects.

In a Sept. 13 letter, the governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Maryland urgently called for more federal support for their states’ wind power agreements with developers. Echoing statements from Ørsted and other wind companies seeking to revise agreements, the governors wrote that “inflationary pressures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the lingering supply chain disruptions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic have created extraordinary economic challenges that threaten to reverse these offshore wind gains.”

“Instead of continued price declines, offshore wind faces cost increases in orders of magnitude that threaten States’ ability to make purchasing decisions,” the letter states. “These pressures are affecting not only procurements of new offshore wind but, critically, previously procured projects already in the pipeline.

“Absent intervention, these near-term projects are increasingly at risk of failing. Without federal action, offshore wind deployment in the U.S. is at serious risk of stalling because States’ ratepayers may be unable to absorb these significant new costs alone.”

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Staying Alive

June 13, 2023 — Thirty years on, fishermen call for a re-evaluation of catch share programs that give foreign investors and non-participants a share of the catch.

Individual Transferable Quotas are far from a new idea in fisheries.

The International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries attempted to manage fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic from 1949 to 1979. The organization started discussing quota management in the 1960s and introduced national fishing quotas in the early 1970s. ICNAF sought to make these national quotas transferable in the late 1970s, but with Canada, the United States, and other North Atlantic Rim countries establishing what were then called Fisheries Conservation Zones extending 200 miles from their coasts, ICNAF was disbanded.

While countries such as Canada and Iceland aggressively pursued policies of quota management, including Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), the United States saw only three fisheries –Alaska halibut, Atlantic surf clam, and southern Atlantic wreckfish – adopt quota management before declaring a moratorium on the use of a tool that most saw as privatization of a public resource.

In 2000, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe failed in her efforts to extend the moratorium. Under pressure from Jane Lubchenco, who headed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries under President Obama, groundfish fishermen in New England – the last bastion of defiance against what many fishermen saw as the  privatization of fishing rights – agreed to the start of a catch share program in 2011.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MAINE: Maine lobster fishery withdraws from Marine Stewardship Council recertification process

February 6, 2023 — The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery has temporarily withdrawn its effort to pursue recertification under the Marine Stewardship Council sustainability standard.

The Maine Certified Sustainable Lobster Association (MCSLA), an industry group that has served as the fishery’s client group for the MSC certification process since it was first certified in 2016, decided not to continue to seek recertification, after it lost its certificate in November 2022.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MAINE: The check is (almost) in the mail

February 6, 2023 — Active lobstermen are being advised to open mail from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in the coming months, because the envelopes that arrive just might contain a check for up to $3,500.

Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher told members of the Lobster Advisory Council at their January 18 meeting that the checks—meant to partially offset the expense of gear modifications required by 2021 North Atlantic right whale protections—will be issued by ASMFC and should arrive this spring.

“These are checks that will be distributed to a lot of harvesters,” Keliher said. “The Commission will be writing the checks, so make sure you don’t see the envelope and throw it away.”

In an email clarifying the timing, DMR spokesman Jeff Nicholas wrote, “We cannot predict the timing for that, but we will keep license holders informed as the approval process is initiated.”

The money comes from a $14 million appropriation approved by Congress last year—prior to the December passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, usually referred to as the Omnibus spending bill. The December bill delayed new protection rules for the endangered whales for six years and includes $55 million for research and development of new technologies for lobstering and for monitoring the whales.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

NMFS, Massachusetts order gear removal for right whales on the move

February 3, 2023 — An unusual winter concentration of endangered North Atlantic right whales in Cape Cod Bay prompted Massachusetts state officials and the National Marine Fisheries Service to order a three-month removal of trap and pot fishing gear in the region through April 30.

The emergency rule announced NMFS this week covers the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge where the gear closure is intended to reduce the risk of gear entanglement “when large numbers of whales are exiting Cape Cod Bay at the same time and place where fishermen are either fishing or may be staging their trap/pot fishing gear in preparation for the May 1 opening of federal waters in the Massachusetts Restricted Area,” according to the agency.

NMFS last imposed an similar emergency rule for the Massachusetts wedge area in April 2022. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries requested the NMFS action, as the state imposed its own state-waters seasonal restrictions effective Feb. 1.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

New England council asks NMFS for Northern Gulf of Maine scallop permits control date

February 2, 2023 — The New England Fishery Management Council is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to establish a control date that potentially could be used to determine eligibility criteria for switching between the types of scallop Limited Access General Category (LAGC) permits that can be used to access the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Management Area.

Control dates become effective the day NMFS publishes a notice in the Federal Register, which may not be until March for this particular request. The Council took this step as a precautionary move while it assesses a recent increase in fishing activity and permit switching in the Northern Gulf of Maine, especially between C and B permits.

Category C permits give vessels the opportunity to land 40 pounds of scallops as incidental catch on non-scallop trips, while B permits allow directed fishing on 200 pounds of scallops per day in the Northern Gulf of Maine area.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEW YORK: Hundreds of undersized lobsters found in New York City supermarkets

January 23, 2023 — Authorities in the U.S. state of New York have discovered hundreds of undersized lobsters for sale in several New York City supermarkets.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Division of Law Enforcement conducted an inspection of an unidentified supermarket in the borough of Queens on 24 December, 2022, and found 128 undersized live lobsters for sale. On 26 December, 245 undersized lobsters were found for sale at a market in the borough of Brooklyn. Both supermarkets were issued violation notices, according to a DEC press release, with each violation coming with a fine of between USD 400 and USD 600 (EUR 368 and EUR 552). The lobsters were confiscated and donated to a food pantry in New York City.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource