Ocean Zoning Discussion Forum

NEW BEDFORD — Calling offshore wind turbines “the new frontier for renewable energy,” Daniel Cohen, head of an offshore wind company owned by fishermen, spoke to a small but lively crowd at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Monday.

 

Cohen is president of Fishermen’s Energy, made up of principals in several other New Jersey-based fishing companies who want a stake in how and where wind turbines are sited, he said.

  

“Offshore wind is happening,” said Cohen, who is also CEO of Atlantic Capes Fisheries, a New Jersey company that operates more than 20 fishing vessels.

  

Eight companies are currently proposing projects off Maryland, he said, and his company is one of the eight. “If we didn’t exist, seven of them would still be there,” he said.

  

But some of the fishermen in attendance Monday predicted further ruin for the industry if such projects become a reality.

  

“This is another flank we’re being attacked on,” Rhode Island fisherman Dick Grachek said. “We have been kept out of those areas because it’s a sensitive yellowtail spawning ground.”

  

Last December, the Obama administration announced its intention to encourage the development of wind energy in federal waters off the Massachusetts coast by offering leases to interested parties, with proposals due by Feb. 28.

  

“The import of this is that it will facilitate a faster time line for permitting in areas they consider appropriate for development,” Cohen said. The area proposed locally covers a 3,000-square-mile expanse of federal waters and includes sensitive fish habitat area and lucrative fishing grounds.

  

Turbines would be located a half-mile apart and, to prevent scouring by ocean currents, the base would be surrounded by a circle of large stones, 200 feet in diameter. In addition, a network of ground cables transmitting electricity would further hamper fishing operations, opponents maintain.

  

“The government is looking at marine spatial planning as a cash cow — nothing more, nothing less,” fisherman Joel Hovanesian of Rhode Island said. Apart from taxes, leases granted by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (formerly the Minerals Management Service) have become the principal revenue stream for the federal government, he said.

  

“I’m opposed to this because it won’t work,” said Ed Barrett, president of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership. “Not one shore-side facility will come offline from any of these projects.”

  

Asked whether he knew of any areas of the world where offshore turbines and commercial fishermen have successfully coexisted, Cohen said he could not say. “The data from Europe is not very good,” he said.