Saving Seafood

Fishing Industry Feels Stranded As Offshore Wind Gathers Momentum

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.

Read the full story at WNPR

Offshore wind projects line up for federal review

June 30, 2021 — The pipeline of offshore wind projects is coming into clearer view with federal officials this week planning to start their official review of a development that could offer as much as 2.3 gigawatts of power to northeastern states.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans on Wednesday to publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for Vineyard Wind South, a project of up to 130 turbines that the company, which is separately developing a project solely for Massachusetts utilities, plans to build out in phases. The first phase, 804 MW of power, is earmarked as Park City Wind and is under contract with Connecticut.

The notice of intent will kick off a 30-day public comment period during which BOEM will hold three virtual meetings to identify issues it should consider as it prepares a draft environmental impact statement which will then be subject to further review and its own approval. Earlier this month, BOEM began a similar process for Equinor’s 816-megawatt Empire Wind project that’s expected to deliver power to New York.

The Vineyard Wind South project is planned for the remaining southwestern portion of the 260 square mile lease area that will host the Massachusetts-contracted Vineyard Wind I project at the northeastern end. If the Vineyard Wind South project is fully developed, BOEM said it could include “up to 130 wind turbine generators, two to five offshore substations, inter-array cables, and up to five export cables connecting to the onshore electric grid in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, at up to three onshore substations.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Sen. Shaheen Backs Plan To Split Offshore Wind Lease Revenue Among Coastal States

June 25, 2021 — A new bill backed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) would share the revenue from offshore wind development with coastal states like New Hampshire.

The bill proposes new uses for revenue generated by the sale of leases that allow developers to build wind farms in federal waters.

The federal government has sold hundreds of millions in offshore wind leases. Right now, the money goes back to the U.S. Treasury.

This plan would send half of it to states that are adjacent to approved wind projects. They could use the money for coastal resilience and climate change adaptation projects, fisheries research and conservation work.

Most of the remaining revenue would go to a similar existing grant program for coastal and Great Lakes communities.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

MASSACHUSETTS: Baker, guvs urge Biden to keep offshore wind a priority

June 7, 2021 — Gov. Charlie Baker and governors from eight other states poised to benefit environmentally and economically from the emerging offshore wind sector sent President Joe Biden a letter on Friday outlining their thoughts and recommendations for keeping the momentum going in the fledgling field.

Biden’s administration has moved quickly to advance offshore wind projects, namely the Vineyard Wind I project that last month got the federal go-ahead it had been waiting about two years to receive, and Baker’s administration has cheered the president’s swift action.

Vineyard Wind, which is expected to deliver 800 megawatts of wind-generated power to Massachusetts by 2023, is on track to be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. Mayflower Wind, an 804-MW project, is also under contract to deliver power to Massachusetts. And an upcoming state solicitation seeks a project of up to 1,600 MW that can come online by the end of the decade.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Vineyard Wind fisheries study to assess effect of offshore turbines

June 4, 2021 — Cooperative surveys by scientists and fishermen have laid groundwork for the first baseline study of how offshore wind turbine construction will affect southern New England fisheries, and organizers are seeking more advice for fine-tuning the effort.

“We’re really designing this on the fly,” said Steve Cadrin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology, during a virtual meeting Thursday with fishermen and scientist advisors. “We’re wide open on how we can do this better.”

With offshore wind development plans surging ahead under the Biden administration, there’s a scramble in the marine sciences to understand how the potential construction of hundreds of turbines off the U.S. East Coast could change regional ocean environments and fisheries.

“Getting a baseline (study) is a real challenge” given the speed of recent developments, and the UMass-Vineyard Wind project is drawing on decades of fisheries survey work in Northeast waters, said Cadrin.

Based on eight surveys since 2019, researchers have determined that protocols used in the Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (NEAMAP), an integrated, cooperative state and federal data collection program, will be sensitive enough to “detect a moderate change for most important commercial species” such as whiting, longfin squid and summer flounder when the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project is constructed, said Cadrin.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Fighting for fishing grounds in face of wind farms

June 1, 2021 — For almost a half century, Angela Sanfilippo has spearheaded campaigns to protect the physical and economic health of commercial fishermen, their families and the communities in which they live.

The longtime president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association waged battle with energy behemoths while opposing two live natural gas pipeline terminals within about a dozen miles of Gloucester’s shores.

She fought foreign encroachment into U.S. fishing grounds and wrestled with fishing regulators over onerous fishery management regulations that have shrunk access to the rich fishing grounds that surround Cape Ann.

Now Sanfilippo is saddling up one more time to try to prevent the inexorable march of offshore wind projects in Massachusetts waters from blowing away elements of the Bay State’s historic and productive fishing industry.

“We are not crazy enough to think we’re going to stop this massive thing now,” Sanfilippo said at the beginning of an extended interview following the federal government’s final approval on May 10 of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project, located south of Martha’s Vineyard. “But we want to be at the table.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Headwinds: Offshore wind will take time to carry factory jobs to U.S.

May 28, 2021 — When U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration approved the country’s first major offshore wind farm this month, it billed the move as the start of a new clean energy industry that by the end of the decade will create over 75,000 U.S. jobs.

Industry executives and analysts do not contest that claim, but they make a clarification: For the first several years at least, most of the manufacturing jobs stemming from the U.S. offshore wind industry will be in Europe.

Offshore wind project developers plan to ship massive blades, towers and other components for at least the initial wave of U.S. projects from factories in France, Spain and elsewhere before potentially opening up manufacturing plants on U.S. shores, according to Reuters interviews with executives from three of the world’s leading wind turbine makers.

That is because suppliers need to see a deep pipeline of approved U.S. projects, along with a clear set of regulatory incentives like federal and state tax breaks, before committing to siting and building new American factories, they say – a process that could take years.

“For the first projects, it’s probably necessary” to ship across the Atlantic, said Martin Gerhardt, head of offshore wind product management at Siemens Gamesa, the global offshore wind market leader in a comment typical of the group.

Read the full story at Reuters

Vineyard Wind paying UMass scientists to survey ocean area it’s leasing

May 24, 2021 — The company that intends to build a $2.8 billion offshore wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard is paying the UMass Dartmouth and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association about $2 million a year to survey the sea floor before, during and after construction and see what impact the project has on the ocean.

Vineyard Wind has contracted with the School for Marine Science and Technology to send scientists out on local lobster and fishing vessels to measure, tag and count the lobsters and fish they catch before releasing them back into the ocean. The data they collect will establish a baseline of what sea life inhabits the 167,000 acres of ocean that the company is leasing, as well as an adjacent area for comparison.

“We have a strong interest in using local mariners with local knowledge as much as possible,” said Andrew Doba, a Vineyard Wind spokesman.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Massachusetts fishermen fear ‘dead zones’ as massive wind farms loom

May 24, 2021 — Vineyard Wind, the company given federal approval this month to build the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, could be the harbinger of a new age of wind energy in the U.S. — but some fear it also could irreparably harm Massachusetts fishing and lobstering industries where it will be built.

The 62 wind turbines will be located 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and generate enough electricity to power approximately 400,000 homes by the time the project is completed in 2023, Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen said. He also said it also will create about 3,600 jobs — half of them permanent, the other half construction jobs.

But what worries Ed Barrett of Marshfield is what it might do to his livelihood. A commercial fisherman and lobsterman for 43 years, Barrett fears the project and others like it that are still in the planning stage, such as Mayflower Wind 20 miles south of Nantucket, could change the seasonal migration of many fish or even create “dead zones.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Following Vineyard Wind’s final approval, Mayflower Wind is next up seeking permits

May 20, 2021 — Last week’s federal approval of Vineyard Wind’s first-in-the-nation project was hailed as the start of the offshore wind era — and the project that moves up in the state’s queue is introducing itself to more residents as it prepares for its own turn under the microscope.

Mayflower Wind, the Shell and Ocean Winds North America joint venture, selected unanimously by Massachusetts utility executives in 2019 to build and operate an 804-megawatt wind farm about 20 miles south of Nantucket, held the first in a series of virtual open houses Tuesday night to explain its project and answer questions from residents.

The second offshore wind farm to secure a contract with Bay State utilities, Mayflower Wind expects to get the state and federal permitting ball rolling in 2022, with the wind farm scheduled to be in operation by mid-December 2025.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times