New England Fishermen Stage Floating Protest at Vineyard Wind Site
The fishermen are doing the work that environmentalists used to do.
I am continuing to keep an eye on the Vineyard Farms offshore blade failure near Nantucket. A few weeks ago the facility was closed because of the failure of Vineyard Wind’s newly installed wind turbines, and the city was poised to sue.
After one blade failed and ended up in the water, the beaches were cluttered with sharp fiberglass shards, which is a sub-optimum condition at the height of the summer tourist season. Continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
Now this weekend, a “flotilla” of about two dozen commercial and recreational fishing vessels steamed to the wind farm on Sunday to protest offshore wind development.
The vessels, hoisting anti-offshore wind flags and blasting air horns, departed early Sunday morning from ports in New Bedford, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Rhode Island and along the Cape, converging at about noon on the site of the crippled Vineyard Wind turbine.
“The blade collapse was an eye-opener to a lot of people who before didn’t know that offshore wind is a disaster for the ocean,” said Shawn Machie, 54, who is captain of the New Bedford scalloper F/V Capt. John.
…The “flotilla” protest was organized by the New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA). Plans kicked into gear when Dan Pronk, captain of lobster boat F/V Black Earl, was collecting turbine debris that had washed up on the shores of Nantucket. He called Machie and other New England fishermen who said they felt they had to “do something before it’s too late,” Machie said.
“We feel like our jobs are just accepted as collateral damage,” Machie said. “We are regulated for sustainability. And that makes sense. We need regulation. But offshore wind is allowed to kill fish and wreck nurseries without any manageable stopping point.”
The protesters indicate the impact on their industry will be more significant than many appreciate…because they can’t trawl on former fishing grounds.
Otto Osmers, a commercial fisherman from Martha’s Vineyard, made the journey from Menemsha at 7 am on Sunday, arriving at the Vineyard Wind site around 10:30 am. Osmers conceded that offshore wind projects like Vineyard Wind can block trawling and crab trap routes, but had other concerns about the project. “The ocean is one of the last undeveloped places on earth,” he remarked about the sight of so many large turbines peppering the horizon. “We put cables down there but it’s largely undeveloped. It’s sad to see that go away.”
Others were more passionate in their displeasure. Sue Zarba, who along with her husband John who fish recreationally, said seeing the scale of the turbines was emotional. “That was the first time I was up close to the turbines, and I was sobbing,” she said in an interview after the protest. “After you’ve seen this offshore wind farm, you cannot unsee it. Soon over one thousand acres just off the coast will be filled with turbines. We will never be able to undo this man-made environmental disaster.”
“This cannot continue because that’s where we fish,” said Zarba. “They’re developing on a tuna fishing ground. You can’t fish around turbines, you can’t trawl.” She added that her son, who attended the protest, was initially skeptical of her protesting but changed his mind once he saw the turbines.
However, their protests are being met with a deaf ear. The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a new biological opinion for flagship offshore wind project Vineyard that finds no adverse effects to endangered whales and other marine wildlife stemming from driving the array’s last 15 monopiles.
“It will have no effect on any designated critical habitat,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said in a statement. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate serious injuries to or mortalities of any ESA-listed whale including the North Atlantic right whale.” The agency said that with mitigation measures, “all effects to North Atlantic right whales will be limited to temporary behavioral disturbance.”
Scenes from the @fishstewardship flotilla protest at the Vineyard Wind farm today. pic.twitter.com/iVFpGHasYd
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) August 25, 2024
In conclusion, the fishermen are doing the work that environmentalists used to do.
Watch: Morano on Fox talking Vineyard Wind offshore pollution disaster:
‘The fishermen are forced to do what the environmentalists should be doing’ https://t.co/66B8a5yDt4 pic.twitter.com/IfVM6KIcQx
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) August 28, 2024
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Comments
We used to kill whales for oil. Now, we kill whales for wind.
Vineyard Winds was granted dispensation by the Biden gang to kill up to 24 whales without consequence.
I was just out on Block Island last week, they’ve got a huge one going up too. At this point there are about 20 complete with a total of 200 planned. They are almost 800 feet tall with the top blade at its peak, about 600 for the main structure. They stand taller than any building in Connecticut. Block Island has had a puny 5 mill farm, smaller structures too, for more than a decade—it was the first in the NE I believe. Anyway, the 5 were bad enough, this new project is awful and it’s measurable. They have had the numerous whale deaths that accompany these projects but the fishery has changed too. I fish there often and always charter with the same summer captain, and the same winter captain. Now it could be the rapid cooling of the Atlantic this summer or the wind farm or something else but the famed striped bass fishery on Block is in bad shape. The island’s waters have been invaded by shark and the shark have the fish captive in two pods off the NE side of the island. You can’t target the bass because you end up feeding them to the sharks and then you have a long fight with a shark on the line. Ive been fishing Block for decades and there has never been anything like this before.
Imagine, 200 eighty story structures in the ocean in the middle of nowhere!
I suspect that there is not any city in the world that has anywhere near 200 eighty story structures.
Something bad is going to happen there.
It is impossible to know just how really bad it will be.
If a government agency promulgated that these monstrosities pose no “harm,” you can be sure the exact opposite is the real truth.
At least the pharaoh’s pyramids were aesthetically pleasing, well-built and suited to purpose.
Bonus reference to Egypt makes this my “Comment of the Day”.
businesses are “forced” to take subsidizes lest the government go after them in courts etc
congress should write a law stopping this practice
of giving welfare to anyone
I object strongly to any and all wind/solar investments. They are a waste of money providing a solution for a non-problem. Yet I have no empathy for most of the people complaining about them. They are the ones who voted into office the people pushing this nonsense. No doubt many of them will vote for Harris who thinks there is a climate emergency and who will continue to promote this environmental disaster.
The Wind Farms in Altamont Pass, CA have been there for decades and showed me that wind turbines are no good. They have many failures and each year they kill about 1M birds on North-South migrations.
So putting Wind Turbines out in water is not good, Overall the power produced is not as good as a power plant that is producing energy from Natural Gas, Oil, Nuclear, or other sources.
I just sent these fine men a modest donation in memory of my hard-working grandfather, a commercial fishing captain out of Bristol. It felt good to remember him today.
What are the odds that the governments of these coastal states and the Federal government give an obese rodent’s gluteal musculature about what these icky, work with their hands, fishermen want?
Subotai Bahadur
Although I always thought that I lost my father too soon, I am really glad that he doesn’t have to know about some things. He fished that area as a young boy and a young man before WWII brought him south to meet my mother. Summers when we went up “home,” he was always so happy to go fishing with friends who were commercial fishermen.
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