No one needs to be told how the fishing industry, once an economic mainstay of the Massachusetts economy, has been declining in recent years. Overfishing, followed by increasingly onerous federal regulation, has reduced the state's catch, and its fishing fleet, to the lowest level in decades.
Now comes yet another blow to this tottering industry. On December 28, the federal government issued a "Request for Interest" for proposals to erect electricity-generating wind turbines — hundreds of them — in 3,000-square miles of federal waters south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
The problem is, these 3,000-square miles of ocean include some of the richest fishing grounds off the coast of Massachusetts. "Half a billion dollars worth of seafood comes out of this area," according to fisherman David Goethel, member of the New England Fisheries Management Council. The area also includes great swaths of seabed where fishermen are barred on the grounds that sensitive yellowtail spawning grounds are there.
Read the complete opinion in The Martha's Vineyard Times