July 6, 2021 — On a clear morning in early June, cotton sacks filled with shucked scallops hit the scale at Gambardella’s dockside warehouse in Stonington, Connecticut. They’re being offloaded from the Furious, a scallop boat just back from a 12-day trip.
Owner and longtime fisherman Joe Gilbert runs four scallop boats out of this dock. Up in the wheelhouse of the Furious, he indicated on a chart where in the future, this same trip might be a lot more difficult to navigate.
“This entire area here is slated to be a wind farm,” he said. “It’s an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.”
In its pursuit of green energy, the Biden administration has given strong backing to the nascent offshore wind industry in the U.S. While Europe has 20 years of experience developing offshore wind, it’s relatively new in North America.
Last month saw the final approval for the very first commercial-scale project, Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts — just one of 14 projects being considered off the Atlantic coast.
But these aren’t empty seas. Plenty of other ocean users have concerns about the massive steel turbines being erected offshore, not least commercial fishing, which is a multimillion-dollar industry in New England.
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance has taken the lead in advocating for the fishing industry. Its major concern is that fishing vessels could strike one of the massive wind farm turbines in bad weather. In addition, the spinning blades interfere with the radar vessels use to find their catch. And fishermen like Gilbert worry that the structures will alter the ocean ecosystem as they change current patterns and cause formerly distinct layers of water to mix.
“We’re racing forward without the proper science to evaluate if this is good or if this is bad,” said Gilbert.