April 2, 2023 — A sweeping new report compiled in partnership between the commercial fishing industry and federal agencies summarizes massive changes that offshore wind development could bring to U.S. fisheries and ocean environment.
At 388 pages, the “Synthesis of the Science” report covers what is known so far about the likely effects of building potentially thousands of wind turbines off the U.S. coasts.
The topics are wide-ranging: how fishermen may be displaced from traditional fishing grounds, if electromagnetic fields around power cables can change fish behavior, and how turbines could alter oceanographic conditions.
But what’s most striking about the paper is its descriptions of data gaps and needs for much more research, even as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and state governments press forward with wind power planning.
One typical passage sums up how development plans for offshore wind – abbreviated as OSW in the parlance of planners – are outracing the state of ocean science:
“The recommendations indicate an enormous amount of research is still needed in order to understand the impact of OSW on our environment and fisheries, but time is limited. A timely, productive regional science plan for offshore wind could have resulted in an enhanced ability to understand the environmental interactions resulting from the first large-scale OSW projects, especially on a cumulative scale.”