April 19, 2021 — Capt. Hank Lackner docked a 100-foot trawler in Cape May on a recent day after unloading a catch of squid that might end up as calamari on someone’s plate just about anywhere in the United States.
Lackner fears that offshore wind farms coming to the waters off the New Jersey coast in the next few years could threaten his business. Other commercial and recreational anglers, along with the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA), a political action organization, share his concerns.
They worry that wind farms with their soaring turbines could disrupt fish habitat, reroute fishing lanes, and force sport anglers farther out to sea.
Lackner, of Montauk, N.Y., believes that the farms will narrow the currently wide-open pathways to the vessel he docks at Cape May so often that he calls it his second home.
“We have no power,” said Jeff Reichle, chairman of Lund’s Fisheries, a processor of scallops and squid in Cape May that employees 300. “We’re being bulldozed here. It’s just being rammed down our throats.”
He also has attended meetings, and concludes the wind industry and its government backers have all the clout.
Reichle said he is not opposed to offshore wind and was part of a group called Fisherman’s Energy that tried to install five turbines a few miles off the coast of Atlantic City. He said that project, had it succeeded, might have generated data that could have shown potential impact on marine life.