November 13, 2017 — Fishermen are worried about an offshore wind farm proposed 30 miles out in the Atlantic from Montauk, New York, the largest fishing port in the state. They say those wind turbines – and many others that have been proposed – will impact the livelihood of fishermen in New York and New England.
Scallop fisherman Chris Scola pulls out of a Montauk marina at 2 a.m. and spends the next two-and-a-half hours motoring to an area about 14 miles out into the Atlantic. Then, with the help of his two-man crew, spends about 10 hours dredging the sea floor for scallops before heading back to port.
“We have this little patch that’s sustained by myself and a few other boats out of Montauk and a couple of guys from Connecticut also fish down here.”
Scola gives me an earful about state and federal regulations, but the thing that really has his dander up these days is the prospect of hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of giant wind turbines spread out in the New York Bight, an area along the Atlantic Coast that extends from southern New Jersey to Montauk Point. It’s one of the most productive fishing grounds on the Eastern Seaboard.
“To me, building windfarms here, it’s like building them on the cornfields or the soyfields in the Midwest.”
Scola belongs to the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, which is run by Bonnie Brady, the wife of a longtime Montauk fisherman. She’s an outspoken critic of the windfarms.