marioosh's answer seems to on the right track. It didn't work for me. So I found:
Problems connecting via HTTPS/SSL through own Java client
which uses:
java.lang.System.setProperty("https.protocols", "TLSv1,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2");
Which seems to be necessary with Java 7 and a TLSv1.2 site.
I checked the site with:
openssl s_client -connect www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov:443
using
openssl version
OpenSSL 1.0.2l 25 May 2017
and got the result:
...
SSL-Session:
Protocol : TLSv1.2
Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
...
Please note that and older openssl version on my mac did not work and I had to use the macports one.