Fisheries studies proposed by developers of the first wave of U.S. offshore wind projects would not fully replace federal monitoring that will be hindered by the wind farms, federal scientists report.

A recent article by three National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) scientists follows other reports citing scarce data about the impacts of wind power development off the U.S. coast.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), in its environmental assessments of individual wind farm proposals, has said some impact on nearby fisheries is likely as the facilities are built and operated, and that a collective impact is likely from the numerous wind farms planned along the New England and mid-Atlantic coasts.

This potential effect extends beyond target species to the rest of the ocean ecosystem, with a resulting effect of unknown severity on the people who harvest seafood. The fishing industry has been among the most vocal critics of the efforts by state and federal leaders to build an offshore wind power sector.

President Biden has set a goal of 30 GW by 2030. That is 29.958 GW more than is online today, but momentum is growing: Foundations are being placed in the water this summer for the first two utility-scale projects, which will provide a combined 935 MW to Massachusetts and New York. And BOEM on July 3 greenlighted the third project, which will supply 1.1 GW to New Jersey.

By 2025, BOEM expects to review at least 16 construction and operations plans for projects with a combined capacity of more than 27 GW.

Development is envisioned along most of the U.S. coastline, eventually, but initial efforts are focused on the Outer Continental Shelf from North Carolina to Maine, where more than two dozen projects are in some stage of development.

They would occupy more than 2.3 million acres of what NMFS calls one of the most productive fishing grounds in the world.

NMFS also considers those fishing grounds to be one of the best-understood marine ecosystems in the world, thanks to data gathered by hundreds of scientists and thousands of fishers over the past 60 years, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

And that’s where the scientists see problems arising.

Survey Says

During its environmental review, BOEM and NMFS in 2021 determined Vineyard Wind 1 would have major adverse impacts on fisheries surveys and agreed to develop a program to mitigate those impacts.

In December 2022, the two agencies released a strategy for doing this, but said it would be too late to implement that strategy in lease areas already in development off the coast from Massachusetts to New Jersey.

However, they said, the strategy would be useful in Northeast waters not yet leased. Also, the general framework, goals and objectives of the strategy could inform mitigation efforts in other regions of the country, even if specific actions would vary by region.

The issue is not academic: NMFS is steward of the nation’s marine resources, and in the face of scientific uncertainty, it generally takes a precautionary approach, such as lowering fishing quotas.

NMFS has tried to avoid this through extensive efforts to maintain year-to-year consistency in surveys begun anywhere from 1961 to 1998. It considers this especially important in the face of climate change, which is blamed for multiple impacts on marine ecosystems.

Dozens or hundreds of towering wind turbines spaced a nautical mile apart in a grid pattern across a wide area would create the inconsistency of data that NMFS tries to avoid.

They would hamper the use of surface vessels, aircraft and other platforms to perform surveys; they would affect the statistical design of surveys; and they would alter the characteristics of the ocean surface, the airspace above, the water below and the sea floor.

Plans Fall Short

More recently, three scientists at the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Rhode Island and Massachusetts wrote that the surveys proposed by offshore wind developers would not serve to fill the data gaps that the wind farms are expected to create in 14 different surveys ranging from towed plankton recordings to sea scallop dredging to aerial seal counts.

NMFS did not specify when the paper was completed, but it is more recent than the strategy issued in December. It was published Thursday on the science platform Frontiers.

The authors identified 67 monitoring studies created by developers of nine offshore wind projects from Virginia to Massachusetts and found multiple shortcomings with them, including:

• • The majority offer no indication that quality-checked raw data will be shared or accessible.
  • None state that supplementing or calibrating to existing NMFS surveys is an objective.
  • All lack specificity about technique.
  • None include nighttime sampling.
  • All intend to address habitat change or biological response to wind development, but their design — such as a too-short baseline study duration — reduces the likelihood the studies will succeed in this.
  • Only two of the 67 plans — both involving drop-camera studies — have the potential to provide a sample that is functionally equivalent to the comparable NMFS study.
  • Most species-specific surveys would focus within an individual project area, and therefore not provide regional data comparable to NMFS surveys.

The authors conclude with a blunt assessment: “Project-level monitoring for offshore wind projects as currently designed for the [Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf] ecosystem will not yield information that can be integrated into NOAA Fisheries scientific survey time series, nor are they designed with that intention. Therefore, they cannot help to mitigate scientific survey impacts from offshore wind development.”

As a result: “The development of offshore wind will disrupt the collection of data for every NOAA Fisheries survey and will thus create spatial and temporal gaps in every data set it collects.”

Knowledge Gaps

Emissions-free offshore wind is being pursued as a climate-friendly alternative to fossil-fired power generation. But its effects are not fully understood.

Whales get a lot of attention, but for every whale that might be harmed or disoriented during construction of a wind farm, thousands of fish might avoid the local area, changing the local ecosystem, altering predator-prey dynamics and affecting commercial or recreational fishing operations.

When construction is complete, the dozens of tower foundations would provide a favorable underwater habitat for multiple species; would preclude use of certain commercial fishing equipment; and might make for better sport fishing opportunities.

BOEM and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center collaborated with a frequent adversary — the fishing industry group Responsible Offshore Development Alliance — to create a report earlier this year laying out what is known and not known about the interaction of offshore wind power with the fisheries.

In fact, one of the authors told NetZero Insider that the report apparently was the first to bring together in one place the body of knowledge, and lack of knowledge, about the ecological effects of offshore wind. (See Report Flags Gaps in Knowledge of OSW Effects.)

Because of the scarcity of data, the report made no predictions on fisheries impact. The authors also noted the window has closed to establish some of the baseline data.

Other nations have been developing offshore wind for much longer than the United States, but there, too, knowledge gaps persist. The International Council for Exploration of the Sea is working to better understand the interaction of fisheries and wind farms.

BOEM is the lead federal agency on U.S. offshore wind development. The National Marine Fisheries Service, informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is part of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, which has a consulting role in the development of offshore wind.