New York Bight Offshore Wind Farms: Collaborative Development of Strategies and Tools to Address Commercial Fishing Access
With funding from NYSERDA, NREL and Global Marine Group partnered with RODA to lead the fisheries related tasks in a project designed to collaboratively develop technical strategies and tools to minimize the disruption of commercial fishing within fixed-bottom offshore wind arrays, while also ensuring economical energy generation and safe operation for offshore wind developers. The project team completed a set of tasks that identified fishing operational risks and data gaps and interviewed members of the scallop and surf clam/ocean quahog fishing industry to construct a set of operational characteristics. These data were used to develop offshore wind project scenarios that included layouts accommodating for the operational characteristics of the fishing industry. The pilot study task was used to further develop technical strategies and tools in a high density, multi-use region with ambitious offshore wind energy production goals.
The final report contains the full literature review of risks and impact minimization strategies for the fishing industry for topics within the project scope. The data assessment and gap analysis of available fisheries datasets highlights the challenges faced when analyzing fisheries data to understand the impacts of offshore wind on the fishing industry. Summaries of interviews conducted with representatives from the scallop and surfclam/ocean quahog industries form the basis of the operational characteristics that informed the follow-on scenario development and analysis and pilot project tasks.
