Steve Budrow steered his sturdy, 47-foot vessel the Mary B. past the State Fish Pier in Gloucester, Mass., on a cloudy afternoon last week.

In his 25 years as a lobsterman, Budrow has faced many challenges. A nor’easter wiped out $16,000 worth of traps in 2003. The price of bait has skyrocketed. State regulators increasingly are imposing restrictions on when and where lobstermen can set traps to conserve endangered species.

Now Budrow faces the growth of offshore wind development, a situation he could not have imagined when he first began hauling lobster traps in the small rustic fishing town of Rockport, Mass.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) concluded its environmental review of the Vineyard Wind I project off the coast near Martha’s Vineyard last month. A statement from the agency signaled its willingness to approve Vineyard Wind’s construction with a cap on the number of turbines. (See BOEM Releases Final Vineyard Wind Impact Statement.)

The state’s sweeping climate bill signed into law last month requires utilities to procure 5.6 GW of offshore wind, and President Biden’s new infrastructure bill would expand offshore wind on the East Coast to 30 GW by 2030.

But Budrow and other Massachusetts fishermen say constructing offshore wind turbines and embedding power cables into the ocean floor to transmit the wind power threatens their livelihood, along with the livelihood of other waterfront industries on Cape Ann.

“It wears on you,” Budrow said as the Mary B. rounded the breakwater.

About 40 lobster boats gathered last week for a parade protesting the recent closure of all state waters to commercial lobster fishing to protect the migration of North Atlantic right whales from entanglement in trap lines. The right whale’s remaining numbers are estimated to be around 360.

“How does that make sense?” Budrow said. “Lobster fishing is shut down for three months, but the state will allow offshore wind companies to build wind farms near whale habitat.”

Offshore wind projects have not been planned for the waters where Budrow fishes, but tall orders for renewable energy at the state and federal level has Cape Ann fishermen bracing for more interruptions to the fishing, as they try to eke out a living, he said.

Subsea base construction and buried cables will limit the places where 50-ft lobster boats can haul traps and skim the seabed for scallops.

In Maine, the marine resources commissioner forced captains who fish along a survey route for an undersea power cable to move their gear. If fishermen didn’t comply, the state threatened to move the gear out of the way using the state’s Marine Patrol.

Further restrictions from OSW developments are the straws breaking the fishing industry’s back; fishermen off the coasts of Massachusetts and Maine are planning protests and visits to the state house.

“Eventually they are going to regulate us out of business if they don’t listen,” Budrow said.

The fishing community is a tight-knit one. Budrow pulled his boat up alongside other lobstermen as the boats chugged to Ten Pound Island and out to Gloucester Harbor.

Paul Theriault, who has been making a living as a fisherman in Rockport for five decades, said it feels like the industry is being attacked from all sides: politicians, conservationists and offshore wind developers.

“Lobsters are big in Massachusetts, but in Maine lobsters are king” as an economic mainstay for coastal towns, Theriault said.

Massachusetts harvests more than $459 million worth of mollusks, such as sea scallops, annually. Fisheries, seafood processors and vendors employ more than 5,700 people in more than 500 businesses, generating more than $300 million in annual wages, according to the state.

The industry also generates $600 million worth of gross state product annually, with Rockport as one of Massachusetts’s top ports for lobster landings.

“There are thousands of families that will be affected negatively by this project,” Theriault said.

He sits on the board of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and meets with OSW developers to explain that the lobster industry in Massachusetts employs crew members, truck drivers, boat builders and captains.

“It’s been challenging to obtain products as one of the local, small lobster dealers,” Anthony Ciarametaro, a wholesale retailer based in Essex, Mass., said at the protest. He works with lobstermen like Budrow and Theriault to sell their catch to restaurants and markets, but fishing restrictions have left supply low.

Response from Vineyard Wind

In response to concerns that offshore wind turbines will encroach on fishing areas, Vineyard Wind reduced the number of turbines it planned to anchor into the sea floor from 106 to 84, and eventually to 62.

“Some fisheries will lose, and some will benefit,” Kevin Stokesbury, a researcher from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, said during a recent a webinar hosted by New England for Offshore Wind. He was hired by Vineyard Wind to assess the impacts of offshore wind on the fishing industry and help develop mitigations.

Areas designated for wind turbine construction in the Atlantic overlap with 40% of scallop fishing zones, Stokesbury said. But the lobster fishing industry might benefit from the creation of more subtidal, shallow habitat zones from the wind turbine platforms.

The final environmental impact statement from BOEM for the Vineyard Wind project said that “most potential unavoidable adverse impacts associated with the [project as proposed], such as disturbance of habitat or incremental disruption of typical daily activities, would occur during the construction phase or would be temporary.”

However, the project “could include effects on habitat or individual members of protected species, as well as potential loss of use of commercial fishing areas.”

Vineyard Wind agreed to provide fisheries mitigations for Rhode Island “after multiple discussions and negotiations,” according to the review, including a $4.2 million fund for direct compensation to Rhode Island fishermen for loss of equipment or claims of direct impact.

The project will also provide Rhode Island with $12.5 million to establish a Rhode Island Fisheries Future Viability Trust and work with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to establish a Compensatory Mitigation Fund for $19.2 million and a Fisheries Innovation Fund for $1.75 million.

But fishermen like Theriault say they aren’t satisfied and argue wind turbines should be built on land instead of offshore.

“Putting things in the ocean is cheap because no one sees it,” Theriault said. “But that’s not a good reason to put it there.”