Workshops Summary
With coordination supported by RODA and Rhode Island Sea Grant, the IEA team facilitated four workshops with fishing industry community members in December of 2023. Workshops were held in Elsworth, ME, Brunswick, ME, Portsmouth, NH, and Gloucester, MA. Workshops ranged from seven to 10 participants, with a total of 35 participants across all four workshops, representing a variety of species and gear types, as well as fishing association representatives and community members.
Participants expressed a range of sentiments regarding offshore wind development. Most noted concerns about potential negative impacts to fisheries and fishing communities from offshore wind related decision-making, siting, and construction processes. All discussions emphasized the need for environmental reviews and risk assessments before leasing, siting, or construction, as well as a need for improved transparency regarding data used in research and management. The table at the end of this summary lists specific topics of discussion across the fishing industry workshops.
Where the information from the workshops went
Workshop discussions helped the FISHFLOW IEA team to modify the conceptual model, identify specific topics of highest interest for indicator development, and better understand indirect, long-term impacts of concern to fishing communities.
The FISHFLOW IEA team is currently using the input from fisheries and research scientist workshops to create a list of potential indicators for tracking impacts, and refining a set of priority impacts and indicators for initial assessments, and recommendations to managers and developers. The team is considering suggestions from both fishing industry members and researchers regarding the type of indicators and data most appropriate for understanding impacts of highest concern, and is documenting an inventory of available data and data gaps for indicator assessment. Participants were concerned that the dual stressors of climate change and offshore wind development could make it difficult to identify the true cause of any observed ecosystem changes. Participants suggested that indicators that could help measure natural variability in ecosystem data would be useful for successfully attributing ecosystem impacts to either climate change or offshore wind.
Biological
Participants raised questions about migration and seasonality, trophic interactions and potential trophic cascades, and species behavioral response due to the cumulative impacts of turbine installation. Impacts to larval distribution, survivorship, and settlement for key species were suggested as high priorities to consider in future monitoring and research plans. Potential biological indicators include:
- Species migration and seasonality patterns
- Distribution, health, and reproduction of target species
- Recruitment and survivorship of young to fish populations
- Mortality rates of protected species including turtles and marine mammals
Physical
Participants were concerned about physical disturbances to the Gulf of Maine that could be caused by offshore wind construction and operation, including benthic habitat disruptions and possible oceanographic shifts to the large-scale circulation and nutrient cycling of the region due to the cumulative impacts of turbine installation. Potential physical indicators include:
- Amount of ambient noise
- Physical disturbance to benthic habitat
- Local patterns of nutrient cycling, upwelling, and downwelling
- Large-scale changes to ocean currents
Socioeconomic
The impacts to fishing activities and response by fishing communities was of shared concern across different stakeholders. Participants suggested that stock size, fish population dynamics, and fisheries-dependent data collection might be all implicated by changes to fishing activities. The cost to fish, fishermens’ choice to leave the industry, fishing displacement or redistribution of fishing effort, risks to safety, rates of catch, among other dynamics, might be influenced by offshore wind development and could result in ecological as well as socioeconomic implications. Potential socioeconomic indicators include:
- Fixed and operational costs of fishing
- Proportions of community revenue from fishing industry
- Environmental Justice and social vulnerability metrics
- Employment rates in fishing and fishing related industries
- Rates of accidents at sea
Next Steps
After developing an initial list of indicators and an inventory of available and necessary data, the FISHFLOW IEA team will regularly engage with state and federal managers, fisheries community members, and offshore wind developers to iteratively review and improve the IEA indicator report to provide the best available science to understand offshore wind impacts on NOAA trust resources.
How to contact / learn more
The extended technical report on the workshops held with both fishing industry members and research scientists is available here.
The IEA team can be contacted by emailing Fiona Hogan at fiona@rodafisheries.org.
Past Meetings
In Spring of 2023, we held several informational webinars that described how an IEA is conducted and provided examples of the type of information needed. A recording of the presentation is provided below; all webinars contained the same information.
These webinars will be followed up by a series of stakeholder workshops to be held throughout the region. In these stakeholder workshops, we will ask the fishing industry to expand on information they have already provided through the BOEM public comment periods to help us identify important links between fishing, the environment, and offshore wind development specifically within the Gulf of Maine. Further details on information needs from the fishing industry will be provided during the informational webinars.