Lisa Prevost: European study finds wind turbines don't affect lobster harvest

European lobster

Via Energy News Network ( https://energynews.us/) and ecoRI News (ecori.org)

In New England, offshore wind developers and the fishing industry continue to grapple with questions over potential impacts on the region’s valuable fisheries.

A recent European study not only offers good news on that front, it also provides a template for how the two industries can work together.

Research conducted over a six-year period concluded that the 35 turbines that form the Westermost Rough offshore wind facility, about 5 miles off England’s Holderness coast, have had no discernible impact on the area’s highly productive lobster fishing grounds.

The overall catch rate for fishermen and the economic return from those lobsters remained steady from the study’s start in 2013, before the facility’s construction, to its conclusion last year, according to the lead researcher, Mike Roach, a fishery scientist for the Holderness Fishing Industry Group, which represents commercial fishermen in the port town of Bridlington, England.

“It was quite a boring result,” Roach said. “All my lines are flat.”

Ørsted, the Danish energy giant and developer of the offshore wind facility, contracted with Holderness’s research arm to carry out the study, as the group has its own research vessel. The collaborative approach, Roach said, has made the findings all the more credible to local fishermen, who were initially certain that the energy project would destroy the lobster stocks.

“We did the research the same way a fisherman would fish — the same gear types, same bait, deploying in the same way,” Roach said. “We were basically mirroring the commercial fishing method in the area. And that has allowed the fishermen to relate directly to the fieldwork.”

Hywel Roberts, a senior lead strategic specialist for Ørsted and a liaison with the researchers, called the collaboration “a leap of faith on both sides to join together and agree at the outset to live and die by the results.” He noted that the level of research also went well beyond what was required for government permitting.

Ørsted announced the study’s results last month in a press release, even as Roach is still in the process of getting the research approved for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

It’s no wonder the European-based wind developer was eager to share the news more widely, as the fishing industry has proven to be a powerful force in slowing the progress of offshore wind development off the Northeast coast, such as the Vineyard Wind 1 project.

Last year, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced it was pausing the approval process for Vineyard Wind 1, a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, to be constructed off Martha’s Vineyard. The agency said it wanted to devote more study to the cumulative environmental effects of the many offshore wind projects lining up for approval.

In June, the agency issued a supplemental environmental impact statement that concluded that the cumulative impacts on fisheries could potentially be “major,” depending on various factors. The federal agency is considering requiring transit lanes between turbines to better accommodate fishing trawlers, a design change Vineyard Wind argues is unnecessary and could threaten the project’s viability.

The developer has proposed separating each turbine by a nautical mile. The transit lanes would require additional spacing.

A final report is expected in December.

The outcome of the Holderness study has “very important” implications for wind projects all over, Roberts said.

“The lobster fishery there is one of the most productive in Europe, and we were tasked with building a wind farm right in the middle of it,” Roberts said. “If it can work in this location, we think it can work in most places around the world.”

Ørsted even brought Roach and one of the Holderness fishermen to Massachusetts last year to spread the word to worried lobstermen about the minimal impact of Westermost Rough.

Roach said he’d like to think his findings “eased some concerns” in New England. However, he said he disagrees with Ørsted that the outcome in the North Sea is applicable to other areas of the world, where habitats and the ecology of the species could be very different.

“There are lessons to be learned and guided by, but I can’t say it’s directly transferable,” he said.

Lisa Prevost is a journalist with Energy News Network, an Institute of Nonprofit News (INN) member that has a content-sharing agreement with ecoRI News.

And you're on your own

“I conversed with a young lobster fisherman who gets up at 5 in the morning and returns home again from the sea at 3 in the afternoon. I asked him if he liked lobstering. ‘You get used to it’ was his reply.’’

Earl Thollander, in Back Roads of New England

Chris Powell: Forget about Afghanistan, protect lobster owners' privacy

How strange that this country's war in Afghanistan is entering its 17th year with neither success nor political controversy. Americans seem to have taken the advice given to them by the  late comedian Mort Sahl about the Vietnam War: Just accept it as part of your life. But the main American portion of the Vietnam War lasted only 10 years.

Of course, Afghanistan is not producing the U.S. military casualties Vietnam did, so presumably the public finds them acceptable if they are even noticed at all. The casualties of Afghans, often innocent civilians, are apparently irrelevant. This lack of interest has caused President Trump to delegate to the defense secretary a decision on whether to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, the current number being grossly inadequate to pacify the country. The necessity and practicality of pacifying it are not questioned, nor the cost -- billions of dollars every year even as the United States is said to lack the money to ensure that everyone has decent medical insurance in America. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan does not seem to be an issue in Congress at all.

But the other day Connecticut's senior U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, did express concern about a Transportation Security Administration agent's displaying on Twitter the photo of a 20-pound lobster that was found in a cooler being inspected at the airport in Boston for shipment to Georgia. The lobster had been purchased at a fish shop in Old Saybrook and the shop owner got indignant that the lobster had been displayed without the buyer's permission. So Senator Blumenthal visited the shop to concur with its owner before an audience of journalists.

 "What may seem funny to one person may feel like a violation of privacy to another," the senator said. But in displaying the lobster the TSA people did not identify its buyer and thus did not violate his privacy, while if the lobster had any privacy rights, they were first violated by the fish shop itself when it put the crustacean in a display case for sale.

No matter, for the senator had gotten on television again and for a reason -- the privacy rights of lobsters and those who would feast on them -- more interesting than his usual denunciation of the Trump administration, which everyone already knew to be incompetent and disgraceful. But another war waged half-heartedly out of mere inertia is even more disgraceful, and removing that disgrace requires Connecticut's members of Congress to speak out against it and their constituents to press them to.

Nice Guys Finish Without a Budget

Connecticut has gone two weeks without a state budget, but at least House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz this week accepted responsibility for failing to rally the House Democratic majority behind one by July 1. In part the problem may be Aresimowicz's virtues. He is known for reasonableness and patience rather than for cracking heads. To a greater extent the problem may be the division in the speaker’s party.

While most House Democrats, liberals, want to raise taxes again to cover the huge budget deficit that reflects the failure of liberal policies, Governor Malloy has turned against raising taxes, as have a few Democratic House members whose defection would send a tax-raising budget to defeat at the hands of the unusually large minority of Republicans in the House. So for the time being the hapless Democrats seem to prefer to let the governor do Connecticut's budgeting by himself day to day, to exact unpopular cuts on his own, and to take the blame, since he's not seeking re-election. If he tires of that, maybe he will invite the Republicans and dissident Democrats to send him a Republican budget without more taxes.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.