April 23, 2023 — The fisheries have concerns about the rapid development of offshore wind farms and what remains unknown about how fish will be affected by wind energy technology.
A new report on the intersection of the fisheries and offshore wind from the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) outlined some of the concerns.
Fiona Hogan is RODA’s Research Director and the paper’s lead author.
The report highlights uncertainty about the noise produced from wind turbines. Hogan said it’s still not clear how fish will react.
“We’re not sure what the overall net impact of the full build-out across these areas will have in terms of noise output and how fish species might respond to that directly,” she said.
The question of whether fish could change location because of offshore wind development came from another problem included in the paper.