Saving Seafood

New partnership develops with goal of improving talks between offshore wind, fishing

January 18, 2019 — The pool of organizations aiming to generate a mutually beneficial relationship between offshore wind and the commercial fishing industry grew on Thursday.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) announced a partnership with Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind that is meant to improve communications between the fishing industry and offshore wind developers.

While the agreement was described as a “first-of-its-kind” partnership in the press release, it’s not the first pact agreed upon with the hopes of improving communication.

Last November, the New Bedford Port Authority announced an agreement with all offshore wind developers operating in the Massachusetts/Rhode Island market to serve as the designated Fisheries Representative of the commercial fishing industry to each of the development companies.

Orsted said this agreement would not affect its partnership with the Port Authority. It said it views this most recent announcement as an addition to its relationship with New Bedford.

The agreement between RODA and Orsted is unique in that RODA extends its representations from Maine to North Carolina.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

RODA and Ørsted Partner to Address Fisheries and Offshore Wind Coexistence

January 17, 2019 — BOSTON — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance and Ørsted:

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) today announced that it has entered into a partnership agreement with Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind to improve communications between the commercial fishing industry and offshore wind energy developers.

This first-of-its-kind partnership will create an unprecedented opportunity for commercial fishermen to provide direct input to the wind energy industry on matters of significant interest to their businesses. Under this partnership, both industries will remain autonomous but provide a platform to move towards workable solutions. While non-binding in nature, it is RODA and Ørsted’s hope that discussions will prove beneficial to all parties involved.

“Partnering with Ørsted is a significant step forward as we look to strengthen our ongoing dialogue between commercial fishermen and offshore wind developers,” said RODA Executive Director Annie Hawkins. “RODA believes that we need to develop solutions for offshore wind energy and commercial fishing to coexist, and today’s announcement will support future sustainability for both industries.”

“We are proud to be the first offshore wind developer to partner with RODA, which is an important part to the future of offshore wind,” said CEO of Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and President of Ørsted North America Thomas Brostrøm. “The fishing community must be considered as offshore wind development continues in the U.S. Through this partnership, we will be able to share our concerns in a productive way and develop practical solutions as we all seek to coexist and thrive for a better tomorrow.”

RODA is the only national commercial fishing organization that is purpose-built for interacting with the offshore wind industry to maintain sustainable fisheries. Based from Midcoast Maine to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, it also has the broadest geographic and gear-type range of any East Coast fishing industry membership organization active in offshore wind engagement.

The RODA Board of Directors consists of fishing industry representatives who bring over 200 years of combined operational and management experience, split across the range of federally and state-managed Atlantic fisheries. One of RODA’s primary goals is to ensure that the fishing industry’s input at-large is received, considered, and accommodated to the maximum extent possible in leasing, design, construction, and operations of new offshore developments.

“It is extremely vital that our nation’s fishermen are heard when offshore wind projects are being developed,” said RODA Chairman and Director of Sustainability at Atlantic Capes Fisheries Peter Hughes. “Ørsted has made it clear that they want to be partners with the fishing industry, and we are optimistic that our work with them will set a standard ensuring that fishermen have direct input into wind farm designs and ensuring that their concerns are fully embraced by developers.”

A core component of the partnership will be the creation of a joint industry task force to explore improved approaches to project siting, design, and operations. The two industries have already engaged in extensive communication regarding topics ranging from navigation concerns (including transit lanes and turbine layouts) and other impacts avoidance to identifying a mutual interest in developing transparent strategies for long-term mitigation. This new initiative will provide a more structured process for further collaboration between the two industries.

Ørsted and RODA strongly encourage other offshore wind energy developers and commercial fishermen to join this partnership in order to develop well-informed and enduring approaches to best practices and provide broad representation of the industries.

For more information on joining RODA as a fishing industry member, or joining the joint advisory panel as a member of the offshore wind development community, please contact info@rodafisheries.org.

About Ørsted

Ørsted delivers clean, renewable energy along the US Eastern Seaboard. Through Ørsted US Offshore Wind, the company operates Block Island Wind Farm, America’s first offshore wind farm, and has a comprehensive geographic coverage with the largest pipeline of development capacity, totaling over 8GW in seven states. It is jointly headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island and employs over 100 people.

As the world’s leading developer of offshore wind farms, Ørsted has installed 5.6GW offshore wind capacity in Europe and has a further 3.4GW under construction. It is Ørsted’s ambition to have installed a total offshore wind capacity of 15GW worldwide by 2025. The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. Ørsted develops, constructs and operates offshore wind farms, bioenergy plants and innovative waste-to-energy solutions and provides smart energy products to its customers. Headquartered in Denmark, Ørsted employs 6,000 people. Ørsted’s shares are listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen (Ørsted). In 2017, the group’s revenue was DKK 59.5 billion (EUR 8.0 billion). For more information on Ørsted, visit https://orsted.com/ or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

About RODA

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies with an interest in improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. It supports science- and evidence-based approaches to ocean resource management, including through the use of robust public-private partnerships and collaborative research. For industry communications, public relations, and media relations, RODA is partnering with Stove Boat Communications, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm with expertise in oceans and fisheries issues. Together, RODA and Stove Boat will foster improved communication, ensure published materials are factual, and make information accessible to fishermen and the public

Media Contacts:

Ørsted North America

Lauren Burm, 617-309-8730

laubu@orsted.com

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA)

Bob Vanasse, 202-333-2628

bob@stoveboat.com

 

Creating Transit Lanes for Fishing Vessels in Northeast Wind Energy Areas Still a Work in Progress

December 11, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Offshore Wind Transit Working Group is inching closer to developing transit lanes for fishing vessels in Northeast Wind Energy Areas.

Members of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), as well as other fishing industry representatives, offshore wind developer lease-holders, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the U.S. Coat Guard, convened in Newport, Rhode Island, earlier this month for the Working Group meeting, which aimed to develop fishery transit lanes through the Wind Energy Areas (WEA) in federal waters off of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Currently there are concerns about commercial fishermen safely traveling across WEAs to access fishing grounds. According to RODA, safety risks “greatly increase” due to the long distances that fishing boats may be required to take in order to get around or through the WEAs. To solve the issue, the working group is developing transit lanes.

The goal is for the group to come up with a transit lane option that preserves the most important routes to the historic fisheries. Some route options have been identified, but so far nothing has been finalized.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Working Group Nears Consensus on Transit Lanes for Fishing Vessels in Northeast Wind Energy Areas

December 6, 2018 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), which consists of regional fishing industry representatives from Maine to North Carolina, convened an Offshore Wind Transit Lane Working Group meeting on December 3rd at the Hotel Viking in Newport, R.I.

Fishing industry representatives, offshore wind developer lease-holders, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the U.S. Coast Guard, among others, joined RODA to continue an attempt to develop fishery transit lanes through the large group of Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) in federal waters off of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The meeting was facilitated by the Consensus Building Institute. Currently, three WEAs are subject to active leases held by Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Vineyard Wind.  BOEM will hold an additional auction for three new leases in WEAs adjacent to the existing sites on December 13, 2018.

In addition to loss of access within the lease areas, commercial fishermen coastwide have long been concerned about their ability to safely travel across wind energy arrays to access other historical, traditional commercial fishing grounds. They are especially concerned with the size of the WEAs being proposed by BOEM, which are by far the largest in the world.

While fishing industry representatives and wind developers agree that minimizing transit time through wind energy arrays is a primary design goal, safety risks greatly increase due to the long distances—up to 50-70 miles—fishing boats may be required to transit either around or through wind energy arrays.

The Massachusetts Fisheries Working Group on Offshore Wind began to consider the development of transit lanes earlier this year, and RODA has since held a large workshop followed by the smaller working group meeting to continue this task. To prepare for the working group meeting, RODA asked NMFS and the Northeast Regional Ocean Council Data Portal team to evaluate historic transit patterns to identify options for safe and direct access to fishing grounds. NMFS presented an analysis based on VMS and AIS data that substantially supported input received from the fishing industry regarding prevailing transit patterns.

As some examples, vessels from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and other ports frequently cross the Wind Energy Areas in a “diagonal” Northwest-Southeast direction to access offshore fishing grounds, and will no longer have access to direct routes. Vessels from New York must additionally transit in an East-West direction, whereas other fisheries access grounds in a variety of directions including North-South in western and eastern portions of the lease areas.

Fishing industry representatives have considered a wide range of transit lane options and continue to support options that generally preserve these most important routes to their historic fisheries, which must include a “diagonal” route or, less favorably, smoothing out the Northwest-Southeast edges of the lease areas to allow more direct transit along the perimeters. Offshore wind lease-holding developers, for their part, have attempted to identify routes to meet those goals that also preserve the energy-generating nameplate capacity for each site that allows them to meet pricing goals for power procurement. Developers have various viewpoints on preferred transit lane locations and, as such, layouts have differing ranges of support including for the currently unleased areas.

The series of discussions regarding transit lane design was further from achieving consensus on the necessary width of transit lanes. Offshore fishermen have consistently requested lanes to be a minimum width of 4 nautical miles to allow for safe passage in an area known for extreme weather and tidal conditions, and to mitigate the anticipated effects of radar interference emanating from large monopole turbines. The developers have proposed lanes of only one to two nautical miles in order to optimize site layouts for wind exposure.

In order to foster evidence-based progress on necessary transit lane widths, RODA and others have requested the Coast Guard and BOEM to conduct an in-depth analysis regarding fisheries vessel position data, radar functionality, emergency incident reports, and other items.

While the group has not yet finalized recommendations, both fishermen and developers broadly agree that the most efficient timing for transit lane identification would occur before a lease is issued. RODA therefore strongly urges BOEM to include stipulations for the continuation of these transit lanes in its upcoming lease sale, and welcomes inquiries as to the status of these recommendations as potential bidders prepare proposals.

Additional materials, including a meeting summary with details regarding each of the options, will be available shortly on the RODA website.

About RODA
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad, membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and companies working to improve the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. It seeks to coordinate science and policy approaches, through public and private partnerships, to manage development of the Outer Continental Shelf in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historical fishing.

MASSACHUSETTS: Day-long dialogue between fishing, wind industries nets some progress

November 1, 2018 — Eight hours of ideas, conversation, debate and dialogue from two industries relying on use of the ocean filled the the large grand ballroom at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Wednesday.

In a meeting described as the first of its kind, the fishing industry from Maine to New York as well as the offshore wind industry in Massachusetts and Rhode Island met for a workshop hosted by Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) to discuss two key aspects: fishing transit lanes and input on potential mitigation. NOAA and the Coast Guard were also in the room to get all the key players in a single spot at one time.

“We didn’t reach full consensus at the end of the day but we made progress …It’s step one,” said Mary Beth Tooley of the the O’Hara Corporation in Portland, Maine. “I think that’s the biggest takeaway that we have for the day.”

Most of the discussion revolved around transit routes with some success. Both industries agreed for the most part on two routes, specifically a north/south route and an east/west route.

Two obstacles remain, though, including the width of the lanes as well as a diagonal northwest/southeast lane through the current and future leased land. The issues really pop up in the northwest corner of that diagonal lane.

“The next big step is to try to resolve whatever the issues are that exist and then move forward with a transit lane consensus so not only the industry knows what’s coming but future leaseholders (know),” Eric Reid of Seafreeze Shoreside said.

The fishing industry agreed on a 4-mile width for transit lanes. The offshore wind industry offered lanes at one nautical mile and 2 nautical miles.

At one point toward the end of the meeting, the discussion focused on a north/south transit lane passing through unleased space. The fishing industry posed a question if the land is currently not held by any company, could a 4-mile lane be established?

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance Forms to Coordinate Fishing Industry Action on Wind Power

June 1, 2018 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

With offshore renewable and wind energy development becoming increasingly common on the East Coast, a new alliance has formed to ensure that these developments are compatible with the existing interests of the nation’s fishing communities. The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) brings together a broad range of commercial fishermen from across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to advocate for their shared concerns over emerging offshore developments.

RODA is seeking to coordinate the efforts of the fishing industry, offshore wind development interests, and federal, state, and local governments to promote effective offshore development policies, and to support more scientific research on offshore development impacts. Current regulatory efforts to assess the impact of offshore development on fisheries have been disconnected. Past offshore projects have not adequately engaged with the fishing industry and the regional fishery management councils, leading to offshore leases being awarded to projects located in prime fishing grounds.

“The current, splintered approaches to engaging fishing communities in the offshore wind leasing process are ineffective and inefficient, and the result is that critical fishing industry expertise is not being considered,” said Anne Hawkins, legal and scientific counsel for RODA. “Fisheries need a unified effort to ensure they get the best possible offshore outcomes.”

One of RODA’s first priorities is exploring partnerships with NOAA and the Atlantic states to develop collaborative scientific research. This research would address the lack of peer-reviewed information on the effects of offshore development to fisheries and fish populations. It would also be used to inform offshore developers and regulators in planning sites, awarding leases, designing operations plans, and developing mitigation strategies.

RODA is also working with its members in the fishing industry to provide a unified voice on industry-wide issues, such as consideration of new offshore developments, to ensure that these issues are adequately addressed.

“The industry needs to speak as one,” said Robert Vanasse, communications and media advisor to RODA. “The offshore wind energy industry, and regulators at the federal, state, and local levels need to hear clearly the concerns of participants in our domestic fisheries.  We will work to foster the productive dialogue among those parties that is urgently needed and sorely lacking.

Specifically, RODA will coordinate engagement between offshore development and affected fisheries to guide the planning of future offshore development sites, and to implement effective operations and mitigation programs for existing sites. By creating a united effort from fishing communities, RODA will facilitate more informed development of shared offshore resources.