August 4, 2020 — A pair of new reports from NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee (MAFAC) and the Science Center for Marine Fisheries has raised more questions about how big offshore wind projects – planned for areas of water off the coast of New England in the Northeast U.S. – will impacts the fishing industry in the region.
The science center report calls into question the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s investigations of wind energy impacts on seafood, particularly the supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) that the bureau released on June. That supplement was intended to examine all of the potential impacts wind energy development – both current and future – could have on the surrounding area.