September 1, 2020 — In New England, offshore wind developers and the fishing industry continue to grapple with questions over potential impacts on the region’s valuable fisheries.
A recent European study not only offers good news on that front, it also provides a template for how the two industries can work together.
Research conducted over a six-year period concluded that the 35 turbines that form the Westermost Rough offshore wind farm, about five miles off England’s Holderness coast in the North Sea, have had no discernible impact on the area’s highly productive European lobster fishing grounds.
The overall catch rate for fishermen and the economic return from those lobsters remained steady from the study’s start in 2013, prior to the wind farm’s construction, to its conclusion last year, according to the lead researcher, Mike Roach, a fishery scientist for the Holderness Fishing Industry Group, which represents commercial fishermen in the port town of Bridlington, England.
“It was quite a boring result,” Roach joked. “All my lines are flat.”