New Jersey will spend $3.425 million on three initiatives to research the impact on wildlife and fisheries of the state’s two planned offshore wind projects, which commercial fishermen believes could be severe enough to damage the industry.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) said they will coordinate two projects funded through the state by the developers of the state’s two most recently awarded offshore wind projects: Ocean Wind II and Atlantic Shores.

The awards include $865,440 for a project led by Rutgers University to develop a “specialized surf clam dredge to conduct research in areas where harvesting” of clams takes place in what will soon become wind-turbine lease areas, according to a release by the two departments. The study will be conducted in partnership with Northeast Fisheries and Surfside Seafood Products and the National Oceanic and the Atmospheric Administration.

The second study, costing $2.5 million, will focus on gathering data to assess the turbines’ impact on physical oceanographic conditions such as seafloor topography, sunlight availability and water temperature. The study will be conducted by Rutgers using an underwater glider.

Financial support for the projects will come from the state’s Offshore Wind Research and Monitoring Initiative (RMI), which is funded by the developers of the two most recent of the three projects backed by the BPU. Denmark-based Ørsted is developing the 1,148-MW Ocean Wind II wind farm, and the developer of the 1,510-MW Atlantic Shores is a joint venture between EDF Renewables North America and Shell New Energies US.

The RMI also will provide $60,000 for the state to join the Regional Wildlife Science Entity, which supports research and monitoring on wildlife and offshore wind. That will support regional cooperation and sharing of research in the development of offshore wind energy, the DEP and BPU said.

In addition, the BPU and DEP will soon release a request for proposals for a “passive acoustic monitoring project to better understand the movements and behaviors of baleen whale species,” the two agencies said.

BPU President Joseph Fiordaliso said the funding will enable the state to collect “critical baseline data on whales and their movements along New Jersey’s coastline, as well as contributing to regional collaboration to study the impact of offshore wind development on recreational and commercial fisheries and our rich and diverse wildlife.”

“We are committed to developing New Jersey’s offshore wind resources in an environmentally sensitive and cost-effective way,” he said.

The two developers in their project leases committed $10,000/MW of project-size-awarded capacity — or about $26 million — to fund research and ecological monitoring of offshore wind, according to the BPU-DEP release.

The two projects followed the earlier BPU award of a lease to Ørsted for the 1,100-MW Ocean Wind I project. The state plans to hold at least three more solicitations to give the state a total of 7,500 MW of offshore wind capacity.

Fishery Concerns

Clam industry representatives have in the past expressed concern that the weight of clam dredges, which can weigh 5 to 7 tons when empty, and other nets, combined with unpredictable winds and currents through the turbines will make it difficult and dangerous for fishing boats to maneuver around them. Some tourist businesses fear the sight of turbines on the horizon and the potential damage to marine life during turbine construction could deter recreational fishermen from visiting the New Jersey Shore. (See Fishermen Fear the Impact of NJ Wind Farms.)

Fishing sector representatives were not impressed with research initiatives announced by the DEP and BPU.

Ronald Smolowitz, a technical adviser to the Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents scallop fishermen, called the initiatives “monitoring programs that may or may not benefit fisheries.”

“It reminds me of the TV commercial where the company monitors theft but doesn’t do anything about the theft,” he said. “I think the research needs to focus on seafood security [and] developing new methods and fisheries that are sustainable in this new environment of climate change and industrializing the ocean with wind farms.”

David Wallace, who represents several food processors along the East Coast that also own fishing boats, said he had “no problem” with the state’s initiatives to monitor the impact of the turbines.

“The problem is this should have been started 10 years ago,” he said. If it had, the state would have already built up a “long-term baseline study” of what was happening before the turbines arrived that can in the future be used as a comparison with changes resulting from the arrival of the wind farms, he said.

“We cannot resolve some negative impacts on habitat and whales after thousands of turbines are placed in the ocean,” he said. “The alteration of the ecosystem will be done and protection will be too late.”

Promoting Offshore Wind Research

The announcement of the studies came about a week after the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) approved agreements with four universities in the state to award grants totaling $1,080,000 to create fellowships “to advance academic research and investment in offshore wind learning.”

The funding is in line with the state’s effort to build an industry around its offshore wind projects that will position the state as a hub of investment, manufacturing, labor and logistics that can serve not only the state’s projects but others on the East Coast too. (See New Jersey Shoots for Key East Coast Wind Role.)

The fellowships will be created at Rutgers, Rowan University, Montclair State University and New Jersey Institute of Technology. The fellowships and related programs are intended to “strengthen linkages to offshore wind research by formally engaging New Jersey’s top public research universities and expanding the number of individuals with expertise in offshore wind in the state,” according to an EDA memorandum given to its board about the project.

The fellowships will support 24 undergraduate research fellows, and the funding is designed to help the universities build “long-term institutional expertise in offshore wind” and create a faculty that is “engaged in offshore wind-related research and learning,” according to the memo. Undergraduate fellows will receive a $15,000 stipend, and graduate fellows will receive $30,000, with the courses expected to begin in the fall of this year.

As part of the agreement with the universities, the EDA will organize a NJ Wind Institute Fellowship Symposium to review the research in April 2023.