January 30, 2025 — For decades, researchers around the world have been observing negative trends in plankton population dynamics.
Jerry Leeman, executive director of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), has become a prominent voice for New England fishermen. His passion for defending a way of life comes from having lived it. He knows his fish, but lately, he has focused on an invisible but essential component of the commercial fishing industry: plankton. Like many fishermen, Leeman opposes offshore wind farms, not only because of the space they take up and the dangers they create but because they kill plankton, the foundation of the marine food chain.
“The cooling systems for these windmills pump 8.1 million gallons of seawater through every day, heating it to 86 to 90 degrees and killing 100 percent of the plankton,” says Leeman, citing projections for Ørsted’s 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind project off New York. “We’re seeing a 65 percent decline in the phytoplankton population in the Gulf of Maine over the last two decades, and we’re talking about putting wind farms that kill plankton in areas where we have no baseline for primary production.”
As Leeman notes, phytoplankton is the foundation of the marine food chain. It also provides upwards of 50 percent of the earth’s oxygen. Climate change, wind farms, agricultural run-off, microplastic, and a host of other threats are affecting plankton and it’s surprising that the decline of this vital component of the earth’s ecosystems is not front-page news.