BILLYPENNGRAM – 5/3/22
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Is the sturgeon population rebounding in the Hudson River?
Annual tagging program hopes to answer the question
From New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation
Since 2003, fish biologists in DEC’s Hudson and Delaware Marine Fisheries unit have been studying the population, life cycle, and habitats of the endangered Atlantic sturgeon to manage and conserve this signature species.
Atlantic sturgeon spawned in the Hudson spend one to six years in the river before they migrate to the ocean. Annual counting and tagging of the young fish helps determine how the relative abundance (population) is changing over time in response to management actions such as the coast-wide fishing moratorium that was established in 1998. By analyzing several years’ worth of catch data, biologists can determine population trends in the Hudson River stock. Is it stable? Increasing? Decreasing?
The juvenile Atlantic sturgeon survey takes place in late February through early May in Haverstraw Bay, an overwintering area for these young fish. Fisheries staff use anchored gill nets to catch the sturgeon. The sturgeon are weighed, measured for length, and examined for previous tags. A small sample is taken from each fish for genetic and age analysis. Untagged fish are tagged under the dorsal fin with a Passive Integrated Transponder or PIT tag. This tag is similar to a microchip put in pets and is about the size of a grain of rice.
Since the start of the program in 2004, standardized monitoring suggests the Hudson River stock may be recovering in response to the coast-wide fishing moratorium. Additional years of monitoring will help establish recovery targets for the species as a whole.
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New Jersey town cuts down dozens of trees on Earth Day to block dirt bike riders
By Richard Cowen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Some West Milford, NJ, residents are outraged that the township sent a crew into a wooded area on Earth Day last month to chop down trees and block the trails that ATV riders have been carving out for generations.
There is no public land anywhere in New Jersey where riding an ATV, quad, or dirt bike is legal. West Milford, with 87 square miles of mostly watershed, is cut with trails — and a favored spot for off-roading has long been a patch of municipally-owned forest off Macopin Road and behind the Camelot Estates.
Residents of Camelot Estates say they’ve shared the trails with dirt bikers for generations. But that share-the-road relationship ended on April 22, when, without warning, the township sent a crew with chainsaws into the forest to cut down the trees and lay them across the trails.
“I came home from work, took a walk in the woods, and I wanted to throw up,” said Dave Mussina, who lives on King Arthur’s Court at the edge of the woods. Mussina’s wife works from home and she heard the whirr of the chainsaws as they ripped through the natural playground where the couple’s six boys all play.
“I stopped counting at 85 the number of trees they took down,” Mussina said. “It’s completely absurd that these trees were cut down. It’s sick. And they did on Earth Day, no less.”
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Where New Jersey’s new coastline will be if climate change persists
From Denise Valenti, Princeton University Office of Communications
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy inundated Weber Avenue in Sayreville, New Jersey, with 18 feet of water. If climate change continues unabated, it will be underwater permanently in less than 100 years thanks to a predicted sea-level rise of 4 to 8 feet.
Princeton researchers, students, and community members visited the now-desolate street this week in two groups as part of the High Water Line: New Jersey, a public-facing project initiated and carried out by Christina Gerhardt, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor in the Environmental Humanities in the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) and visiting associate professor in HMEI and the German department.
Most residents along Weber Avenue and the surrounding streets are long gone, having accepted buyouts offered through New Jersey’s Blue Acres program after Hurricane Sandy. The area is adjacent to the Washington Canal, which connects the Raritan and South rivers not far from Raritan Bay.
Gerhardt brought the groups to the site to physically mark where the Raritan is predicted to claim the surrounding area once sea-level rise reaches 5 feet. Using a liner filled with blue-tinted, water-soluble chalk, they drew a line through the neighborhood, which borders township parks and facilities and where there are a few remaining homes.
“It depends on whether or not we get our act together and reduce carbon emissions,” Gerhardt said. If the planet warms further, she said, the impact will be more profound.
A 2014 map by New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection illustrates the vulnerability of New Jersey’s coastal communities to sea-level rise. Map courtesy of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
Through the High Water Line project, Gerhardt, founding director of Environmental Humanities at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, is illustrating the impact of urban sea level rise. In doing so, she hopes to spark curiosity and engagement with the issue, she said.
Since arriving at Princeton in the spring of 2021, Gerhardt has worked with Climate Central, an independent organization of climate researchers and journalists, to create a map of the historic and future shorelines in the region using their Surging Seas software suite. Climate Central’s coastal mapping tool is available for public use to visualize how New Jersey’s coastlines will change with sea-level rise.
Aaron Shkuda, program manager for the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities and lecturer in architecture, said this week’s “walk-and-chalk” tours of the high water line, as Gerhardt calls them, are “like a living map. You’re moving through the space in order to understand it.”
The science on sea-level rise is clear, but Shkuda said even he feels a weariness from climate change narratives. “You can talk about x number of feet of sea-level rise, but when you actually see where the water might come from in the next five years, or a decade, or 50 years, that makes it all the more real to people and can drive them to action,” he said.
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At offshore wind conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey draws praise for its energy approach
By JON HURDLE, CONTRIBUTING WRITER NJ Spotlight
New Jersey has become a national leader of America’s budding offshore wind industry by committing to buying offshore wind power, building the first U.S. port for assembling giant turbines, and recognizing that its workforce needs to have the skills to serve the rapidly growing industry, government and business leaders said Thursday.
At a trade show panel titled “NJ Case Study: Build It and They Will Come,” officials examined whether New Jersey is laying the foundation for a sustainable offshore wind industry that others may emulate.
“What’s happened in New Jersey is, ‘This is what we want, we want some key manufacturing, we want port space, and we want to see it grow,’” said Doug Copeland, development manager for Atlantic Shores, which plans a 1,510-megawatt wind farm off Atlantic City and Long Beach Island.
Copeland praised New Jersey’s approach, which has the state committing to buying 7,500 MW of offshore wind power by 2035, and a combined public and private financial program to stimulate activity.
U.S. identifies possible new lease areas
By JON HURDLE, CONTRIBUTING WRITER NJ Spotlight
The federal government is speeding up its process of identifying and leasing ocean areas for generating offshore wind power because the industry is showing strong demand, and because of the urgency of the climate crisis, the government’s top offshore wind official said Wednesday.
Amanda Lefton, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said officials will auction new wind-energy areas off the central Atlantic coast much more quickly than they did with areas in the New York Bight between New Jersey and New York.
On Wednesday, the bureau called for public comments on six areas from Delaware southward that have the potential for offshore wind leases. After gathering comments from stakeholders including the commercial fishing industry, environmental groups, and the Department of Defense, the agency will identify areas for lease that it says will have the least impact on other ocean users.
The Atlantic lease areas eventually selected will be a fraction of the 3.9 million acres for offshore wind power that the agency announced Wednesday, but they are expected to contribute to the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore power by 2030, Lefton said. The new areas also include 1.1 million acres off the coast of Oregon.
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Should EPA Back-Off Pollution Controls to Help LNG Exports Replace Russian Gas in Germany?
Cheniere Energy says the agency’s decision to start enforcing pollution controls on gas turbines is “counterproductive” in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Environmentalists strongly disagree.
The new Cheniere LNG export terminal is across the water, in Louisiana, from the neighborhood of Sabine Pass in Port Arthur, Texas. Credit: James Bruggers
By James Bruggers Inside Climate News
The nation’s top exporter of liquified natural gas, Cheniere Energy, is using Russia’s war on Ukraine to pressure the Biden administration for a break on regulations aimed at reducing toxic air emissions at its LNG export terminals in Louisiana and Texas.
Environmental advocates are hoping the Biden administration stands firm on its March decision to finally, after nearly two decades, enforce limits on toxic air emissions from certain kinds of gas-powered turbines used in a variety of industrial operations, including the chilling and liquefaction of natural gas at Cheniere’s export terminals on the Gulf Coast for shipment overseas in large tanker vessels.
But Russia’s war in Ukraine has placed enormous counterpressure on the president from the oil and gas industry and its supporters in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, who want U.S. LNG exports to replace Russian gas. Before the war, Russia was supplying about 40 percent of the EU’s gas.