March 28, 2019 — Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a group that represents commercial seafood harvesters concerned about wind farms, says the 10-year memorandum of understanding her group signed this week with the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is a “really big deal.”
“It makes a platform and a mechanism for the fishing industry to give better and more impactful input to the offshore leasing industry,” she told Undercurrent News.
“There’s a lot of frustration in the commercial fishing industry. There are so many meetings and so many working groups and different parties involved, and there is an overall feeling that their input isn’t really being well considered. This provides a clear channel for us to be able to amplify the messages and concerns of the commercial fishing industry and those are being given full consideration in the regulatory process.”
Commercial harvesters are generally supportive of efforts to come up with renewable energy but they’ve been growing concerned and more outspoken about the recent proliferation of wind farms on the Atlantic Coast and how they might be disrupting fishing operations.
There are already 15 active wind farm leases on the outer continental shelf (OCS) between the states of North Carolina and Massachusetts, covering nearly 1.7 million acres, according to a press release. They generate more than 19 gigawatts of energy, enough to power more than 6.5m homes.
But the region is also vital for many endangered and threatened marine species, including the North Atlantic right whale.