November 5, 2025 — In the years leading up to the installation of the first turbine off the coast of Massachusetts, government officials, scientists and fishermen convened in conference rooms and Zoom calls to discuss and debate what the fishing industry’s future could — and would — look like amid grids of steel towers.
An oft-uttered phrase was “coexistence” — a realistic goal to those backing offshore wind development, but a laughable suggestion to some fishermen. Accepting there would be impacts, other terms like mitigation and financial compensation peppered the conversations — tools to address effects on fishermen who will tow in and around the arrays as they’re erected, and once they’re operational.
Now, with more than 120 towers standing off the New England coast as of this month, the stakeholders involved can finally put their hopes, doubts, and hypotheses to the test.
The New Bedford Port Authority and UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) are partnering up for the first of its kind study in the U.S. that will measure how commercial fishing boats and their varied gear — dredges, pots, trawls, and so on — behave and operate within wind farms. The collected data, they say, can answer some unanswered questions, and inform how coexistence between the two industries can be achieved or improved.
“This project gives us the opportunity to address one of the major uncertainties in managing the interaction of offshore wind farms and fisheries,” said Steven Cadrin, professor of fisheries oceanography at SMAST.
The research project is funded by a $420,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and comes at a time when other studies that would have examined offshore wind’s impacts on commercially fished species and other marine interests, like whales, have been terminated by the federal government.
The final details have not been ironed out, but the testing may be conducted within Vineyard Wind or Revolution Wind (both projects have 80% to 90% of their turbines installed).