Scores of fishermen took to the seas Sunday to protest offshore wind developments after a damaged wind blade scattered toxic debris off the coast of Massachusetts.
The blade, a part of the Vineyard Wind development, broke on July 13, spilling Styrofoam, fiberglass and other debris, some of which ended up on Nantucket’s pristine beaches. The flotilla protested the effects of offshore wind on fish stocks and ocean navigation, with roughly 20 ships making a sixty-mile round trip from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to the site of the broken turbine, Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) and captain of the fishing vessel Teresa Marie, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Vineyard Wind was supposed to be one of the premier offshore wind locations in the United States, and it failed before it even got started,” Leeman said. “Now the government is spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money for an experimental, floating offshore wind facility in Maine while openly admitting they have access to limited data on the effects it’ll have on sustainability.”
The federal government issued the state of Maine a lease to develop the U.S.’ first floating offshore wind farm on Aug. 19, according to The Associated Press. The project follows a 2023 bill signed by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills that aims to generate half of the state’s electricity using offshore wind by 2040, the outlet reported.
The Vineyard Wind protest brought fishermen from all over the East Coast, including Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, Leeman told the DCNF.
“We’re all unanimously concerned,” Leeman said. “They are spreading this technology along our coast and we’re not getting answers.”
At a town hall meeting on July 17, Nantucket lobsterman Dan Pronk noted the negative effects the Vineyard Wind debris would have on his business.
“I fish 800 lobster traps right where you’re putting these tombstones, which is also the end of my business… When you apply [fiberglass]… you have to wear respirators. For what reason? Because it’s toxic,” Pronk said at a town hall meeting. “If you breathe those fumes … you’ll get higher than a rat.”
Now, over a month later, Pronk told the DCNF that he continues to be bombarded with debris when he goes to haul his traps.
“At sunlight a few days ago there were white pieces of foam in every direction. I could probably see 40 or 50 pieces,” Pronk told the DCNF. “I made my living down there [by the Vineyard Wind turbines] for the last 25 years. Now I don’t put my gear anywhere them. I don’t want to have to look at them.”
Nantucket lobsterman Dan Pronk, staring down the Vineyard Wind CEO, says
“I fish 800 lobster traps right where you’re putting these tombstones, which is also the end of my business.” pic.twitter.com/T9xqjjI0T4
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) July 17, 2024
Offshore wind farms can negatively affect fish reproduction, with a 2023 report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management finding wind turbine noise may block communication between fish during spawning activities.
Wind turbines also threaten fish stocks by blocking wind, which prevents ocean water from being mixed properly, according to a 2022 report published in Frontiers in Marine Science. Reduced wind speeds prevent cool water at lower layers from being mixed with surface water, causing surface temperatures to rise and altering the distribution of nutrients between water layers, in turn harming “primary production” — the creation of organisms such as algae and phytoplankton that make up the base of the food chain for marine life, the study found.
Offshore wind not only poses a threat to fishermen’s livelihoods, according to Leeman, but also to their safety.
“[During the protest] myself and the other captains all said, ‘imagine being out here [by the wind farm] in a storm, fog setting in, no light.’ There are 22 obstacles in front of you. It would be chaos.”
The foreign origin of many key players in the offshore wind industry, such as Danish integrated energy company Ørsted, Norwegian petroleum and renewables company Equinor, and Vineyard Wind co-owner Avangrid — which is majority owned by Spanish utility company Iberdrola — raises questions around the legality of the projects, according to Leeman.
The 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act gives the U.S. exclusive rights over the use of marine resources up to 200 nautical miles from its coast, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“None of us ever recall having a vote of foreign national companies to come in and have direct impact on our natural resources,” Leeman told the DCNF. “The Magnuson-Stevens Act was designed to kick foreign invades out of our waters to keep our marine resources sustainable.”
Massachusetts fisherman Tim Barret, who was raised in a fishing community in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and has worked in the commercial fishing industry for more than 45 years, also lamented the influence large foreign corporations wield over U.S. marine resources via the offshore wind industry.
“We are small businessmen. Most East Coast fishing businesses are family-owned and have been for generations,” Barret told the DCNF. “We’ve been steamrolled. America as a whole has been steamrolled.”
Barret also views offshore wind and other infringements on the U.S.’s commercial fishing industry as a threat to national food security.
“The vast majority of seafood is imported from abroad,” Barret remarked. “There needs to be thriving U.S. producers of food providing secure, unadulterated product.”
Four-fifths of estimated U.S. consumption of seafood is imported from foreign countries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Moreover, the majority of imported seafood is either caught or processed by China, USA Today reported.
The Biden administration aims to have offshore wind supply electricity for 10 million American homes by 2030. However, despite the billions of dollars in subsidies the White House has provided the industry, there have been a litany of project cancellations, and a July report from the American Clean Power Association found Biden’s offshore wind goals will be unattainable until at least 2033.
States have also fallen behind on their offshore wind objectives. In July, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul conceded the state would miss its target of using 70% renewable electricity by 2030 due to the termination of two of the state’s offshore wind contracts.
The contracts were abandoned in January due to the unwillingness of regulators to boost ratepayer-funded subsidies for the industry.
“Despite pouring subsidies on offshore wind and looking the other way on significant marine impacts and blades coming off, the operators keep coming back to the politicians with higher and higher estimates of electricity costs from their facilities,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF. “As people learn they are getting fleeced, the politicians back off.”
Vineyard Wind did not respond to a request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS)
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