This past Halloween, the U.S. Department of the Interior approved the largest single wind farm project in American history. Dominion Energy’s $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is scheduled to be completed in 2026, with 176 turbines spinning a mile apart, 27 miles off Virginia Beach, generating enough electricity to power 900,000 homes.
Wind now supplies about 10% of U.S. electricity, according to the federal government. But until now, most of the turbine generators were built in the West and Midwest. That’s about to change dramatically, raising concerns among some boaters not only off Virginia Beach, but also off the popular cruising and fishing destinations, such as Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Montauk, N.Y. Ultimately, offshore lease maps show the potential for more than 3,000 turbines from the Carolinas to Maine, making this type of power a contentious issue for boaters and anglers all along the Eastern Seaboard.
Where Will They Go?
There are currently seven operating wind turbines off the East Coast: two pilot turbines off Virginia, and five off Block Island, R.I. Aside from the recently approved Dominion Energy project off Virginia Beach, the bulk of planned turbines is expected to be concentrated from New Jersey to southern Rhode Island and Massachusetts, in mostly mud-bottom waters from 30 to 200 feet deep inside the Atlantic continental shelf.
Most of these 300-plus-foot-wide turbine blades will not be visible from the coast, but some will be — particularly from higher vantage points.
Navigation
Unlike in Europe, where turbines are closely spaced and vessel operation is restricted amid them, most U.S. turbines will have a mile of space between them. Recreational boats and fishing boats that aren’t trawling will generally be allowed to navigate and fish nearby, but not tie off to them.
“We agreed, especially up here in New England, across developers and with the Coast Guard, and as part of these discussions back in the late teens, that all the wind farms in the U.S. would essentially be somewhere around a mile apart in a grid pattern,”said Ryan Ferguson, former head of corporate communications for Orsted. “And we bring people into the simulators — commercial fishermen, sailors, pilots and masters of large vessels, the average boater.No one says, ‘Wow, that’s way harder than I thought.’ They get into the simulator. And they look. It’s a mile. It’s huge.”
That doesn’t resolve the concerns of Jim Hutchinson Jr., the New Jersey and Delaware managing editor for The Fisherman, or Capt. Greg Cudnik, owner of Fisherman’s Headquarters in Ship Bottom, N.J. They say that for boats in fog, or in heavy wind and seas, the turbines could still pose a problem. They also fear problems if a helicopter needs to reach a vessel, including as part of a search-and-rescue operation.
Some fishermen have also raised concerns about radar interference — particularly an effect called multipath interference, which happens when radio signals reach a receiving antenna by two or more paths.
Furuno senior product manager Eric Kunz says there may be some issues with older radar units, but he’s seen none with Furuno’s current products.
“I have never heard a peep about radar interference from anyone at Furuno in Europe, where they’ve been dealing with windmills for the past decade,” he says. “There are fleets of Furuno-equipped vessels servicing wind farms.”
Fishing and Angling Traffic
John DePersenaire, director of government affairs and sustainability at Viking Yacht Co., is among the fishermen raising concerns about traffic bottlenecks, particularly during nice summer days or offshore fishing tournaments that include a slew of boats heading to blue water for tuna and billfish. Ferguson says those boats are not like, say, a net-pulling clam dragger that will have to change routes to avoid towers and underwater cables. While anglers won’t be able to fish some traditional grounds, he adds, most recreational boats won’t be restricted.
Jeff Kneebone, senior scientist with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium, says some boaters are already encountering challenges navigating through smaller sites that are still under construction.
“Your radar is insane,” he says. “There’s so many targets. I’m driving, trying to go in between the turbines. There’s lights everywhere. It’s very confusing. And this is a person that has done this both as my profession and for pleasure for 20 years. This is just 12 turbines, but there are going to be hundreds spread over, like, 100 miles, depending on where you’re going.”
Fisheries Disruption
Wind turbine towers, and the riprap that covers their bases and cables, generally benefit bottom-dwelling species that seek shelter around structure. That congregation can, in turn, bring larger pelagic fish, which is one reason the East Coast’s seafloor is littered with sunken boats and subway cars.
But some anglers are concerned about a few keystone species, especially flounder, lobster and the larvae of some fish. Flounder and some crustaceans have been shown to avoid the electromagnetic fields that will be required to carry electricity to shore. The plan is for thousands of miles of cabling that produces these electromagnetic fields, potentially affecting migration as well as fish distribution.
Hutchinson and Cudnik say this issue underscores the idea that wind farms are a vast experiment without proper science to determine effects. They point to the U.S. test wind farm off Block Island, built in a rocky habitat that’s entirely different from the mud where most turbines are planned.
“In my opinion, you can’t even really learn much from the Block Island wind farm because it’s such a small footprint compared to what is proposed,” Kneebone says. “Basically, the entire ecosystem has been leased for development. Where Block Island is literally one tiny line, maybe a mile or two of five turbines, we’re talking about a thousand square miles.”
Additionally, one of the most important elements of Northeast fisheries productiveness is the warm-cold boundary layer that develops during the summer. It allows for a mix of species, from cold-water bottom-dwellers to warm-water pelagics. Adding scores of fixed structures could alter subsurface currents, temperature variations and turbidity.
On this point, Orsted’s team pointed to an October study by the National Academies of Sciences, suggesting that science is not yet definitive: “Given the limited studies to date, hydrodynamic effects of turbines will be difficult to isolate from the much larger variability introduced by natural and other anthropogenic sources.” The report added that it will be hard to determine whether a change in thermoclines or salinity is affected by larger climatic factors or wind farms.
Hutchinson and his allies say the uncertainty is why a single, smaller wind farm should built before larger projects are brought online. “Let’s put a big one of these facilities offshore and study the heck out of it — and see what a 50- to 60-turbine array will actually do,” Hutchinson says. “So that five, six years from now, we know exactly what we’re looking at.”
Marine Mammals
And then there are dolphins and whales, whose deaths have been the subject of countless news stories, and whose protection is the driving force behind federal rulemaking to reduce the speed of boats.Hutchinson, Cudnik and others say the fatalities may correlate with sonar testing that maps the seafloor for wind farms.
Seafloor mapping sonar is an order of magnitude less disruptive than “air cannons” used for oil and gas exploration, but it’s still loud. Cudnik says that in 2021, he was aboard a boat that recorded pings as high as 154 decibels. That’s four decibels above what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration permitted. By comparison, a diesel sportfisherman running wide open might generate 70 decibels in the cabin.
NOAA says that there’s no evidence that surveying is causing the fatalities, and that companies like Orsted must follow strict guidelines, post whale-watchers and cease all activity if whales are spotted. But even NOAA acknowledges that the sounds can disrupt whale behavior.
“If you’re running around on the offshore grounds, back and forth, zigzagging boats all over the place with that confusing mess, sure, you’re going to be harassing whales,” Hutchinson says. “And if the whales’ communication effort is stymied and they swim into a ship, how did the whale die? Well, I heard a congressman say something along the lines of, ‘I’m at a barbecue for the Fourth of July, and the fireworks start, my puppy gets spooked and runs away and drowns in a creek. How did the puppy die? Did he die by drowning, or was it because of the fireworks?’”
Gib Brogan, fisheries campaign director for Oceana, says the organization supports offshore wind projects for decarbonization but has been frustrated by insufficient science and communication between NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages turbine farm leases.
“There’s a huge sandbar sticking off the bottom of Nantucket Island called Nantucket Shoals,” Brogan sasd. “And there’s a collection of currents and nutrients that makes the soup that creates whale food. The concern is that the presence of these turbines will upset that balance, make it so it’s not valuable for the whales, and then that will make them have to go search for food somewhere else.”
A suggestion was made to add about a 12-mile buffer between the target shoals and the first turbines. “Our thinking is that makes a lot of sense,” Brogan says. “It separates the installations from the whale habitat. And if we learn that these effects aren’t that bad, then maybe most developers can build on that other section. So far, that strategy has fallen on deaf ears. They’re very aggressive on this. And they’ve declined to even analyze that kind of strategy. So we have two federal agencies that are disagreeing on how to manage the effects of these projects.”
Hutchinson says he agrees that green energy is good, but adds, “We’re talking about industrializing our oceans. I’d never thought we’d be at that point. That’s what this is. Industrializing the last, greatest frontier in the United States — on our planet. It’s shocking.”
This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue.
