Fishery Council

Exclude North and Mid-Atlantic from offshore drilling

by Laurie Schreiber

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—At its Jan. 30 meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) agreed to send a letter to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), asking BOEM to exclude the North and Mid-Atlantic from offshore drilling plans.

BOEM’s Draft National 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program includes North and Mid-Atlantic Planning Areas for oil and gase exploration and extraction. The draft plan proposes lease sales in 2021 and 2023 for the North Atlantic and in 2020, 2022, and 2024 for the Mid-Atlantic.

According to a NEFMC press release, NEFMC previously submitted oil and gas development comments to BOEM and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on June 29, 2017 and Aug. 15, 2017. In the August letter and reiterated in the latest letter, NEFMC broke down its concerns into five categories:

• Displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities;

• Harm to sensitive, deep-water benthic habitats, including deep-sea corals, due ot extraction activities;

• Negative impacts on living marine resources due to high-decibel sounds emitted during seismic gas surveys and drilling operations, including potential harm to some of the 28 species managed by NEFMC;

• Negative impacts to nearshore fish habitats due to infrastructure development;

• Risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from oil and gas extraction and transport.

NEFMC also supported developing a report to spatially document the value of fisheries on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf.

BOEM’s proposed plan would replace the 2017–2022 program currently in place.

On Jan. 9, NEFMC’s Habitat Committee voted to recommend that NEFMC oppose offshore oil and gas development in the strongest terms possible. The committee also voted to convene a sub-committee to review the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s (MAFMC) policies on offshore wind and oil and gas development and develop a template for their use in New England.

In considering the motion to oppose development, NEFMC discussed whether to express opposition to development along the entire Atlantic coast, or in the North and Mid-Atlantic.

NEFMC member Michael Sissenwine, who emphasized that he was not advocating oil and gas development along the Atlantic coast, nevertheless expressed caution about making a recommendation before the development of an environmental impact statement.

Sissenwine proposed modifying the letter to reflect strong concern but avoid emphatic opposition, and to conclude that there must be a thorough and transparent analysis.

But NEFMC member Matthew McKenzie said the larger question centered on policy. Offshore drilling is “incompatible with the management of living resources,” he said. He suggested it would be possible to make a policy statement before any analysis is done. “I’m worried about letting the camel’s nose into the tent. If we start with analyses, we’ll be starting to basically make it look feasible.”

NEFMC member Doug Grout supported expressing concern in the letter at least about the North and Mid-Atlantic.

“I agree,” said NEFMC member Eric Reid. “If history can teach us anything about BOEM, you don’t get what you think you would expect. At this point, what I expect from BOEM is that they’re going to ignore anything we have to say. So we ought to keep sending letters until we get someone’s attention.”

Maine tuna fisherman Chris Weiner supported sending the letter. “An oil disaster in our area would be the end of a lot of communities,” he said. “Signaling concern, at the very least, makes sense. I think fishermen as a whole are scared of this.”

Katie Almeida, a fishery policy analyst at The Town Dock, a calamari supplier Narragansett, R.I., agree. “We are frightened of what offshore gas and oil exploration could bring,” she said. “Just the thought of it is alarming, and even thinking of an oil spill is frightening.”

NEFMC considered a draft letter that said that hydrocarbon development in the Atlantic

Outer Continental Shelf “inappropriately risks living marine resources and associated human communities.”

The letter cited commercial and recreational fisheries as important economic drivers along the Atlantic coast.

“If we are to realize the benefits of these activities into the future, energy development must minimize risks to marine species and existing human uses,” the letter said.

Some of the proposed areas overlap important fishing grounds, and others lie just offshore of these grounds, the letter said, citing Georges Bank as an area of particular concern due to its importance for groundfish, scallops, clams, lobster, and other marine species; as well as other areas important as fishing grounds and for migratory fishes, seabirds, and marine mammals.

“Survey and extraction activities could directly displace fishing vessels, and some fishing operations might not be economically viable if forced to move to less productive or more distant fishing grounds,” the letter said. “We are also concerned about the effects of extraction activities on fish habitats.”

The draft letter ended: “In conclusion, we strongly encourage BOEM to remove the Atlantic coast planning areas from consideration in the 2019-2024 plan, and are particularly concerned about leasing in the North Atlantic Planning Area as it has the greatest degree of overlap with the fisheries and species we manage. Additionally, the Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming bodies of water on earth, and we are already seeing evidence of changes in the Northeast Shelf Ecosystem. Given these changes, renewable energy development is a better focus area for the Atlantic coast at this time. While wind and other renewable projects may still have impacts on fisheries, the risks appear to be fewer. Actions to prioritize renewable energy and decrease reliance on non-renewable resources will reduce the likelihood of negative ecological impacts on our ocean resources, and thereby support the human communities that depend on them.”

Information about BOEM’s draft five-year oil and gas plan can be found at boem.gov/National-OCS-Program.