Power from the Gulf
The first offshore wind farm in the United States, is located about 12 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. We'll take a hop out there on the charter boat and show you what's been happening since they flipped the switch on back in 2016. ♪ Welcome to windows to the wild. I'm Willem Lange. With me is Erik Chapman, the director of New Hampshire Sea Grant. You'll hear more about Sea Grant a little later in the story.
But earlier in the summer, we took a ride out beyond Block Island to the country's first offshore wind farm. I wasn't able to join the crew on that particular one. But, Erik, did you know, it's awful good to see you again. Great to see you. Fantastic to see you. We've filmed some stories before in the Gulf of Maine. Yes. The question arises, what in the world does the Block Island wind farm have to do with the Gulf of Maine? Well, there are a lot of discussions and ideas about doing something very similar here in the Gulf of Maine.
So, we're kind of on the road, kind of exploring and learning about what would make sense to do, in the Gulf of Maine in terms of, offshore wind energy. And we looked at Block Island as an example of, well, what did they learn about what worked and what didn't work in the process of doing something like that. Apparently it works. They're still here. Yeah. It works.
And what they're thinking about here, it will be quite different than what you saw or what we saw in Block Island. That was a small farm. Those are in shallow waters near shore.
What they're thinking about in the offshore here in Gulf of Maine is a much deeper water. So they'll be floating platforms and they'll be much larger farms if we end up moving forward with the plan. But you don't have quite the sea traffic that you have farther south, right? No.
But anything that you do in the Gulf of Maine is something that people are very passionate about. That's for sure. Yeah.
And fundamentally, it's really about our relationship with the ocean. So anytime you're thinking about doing something on the scale of some of these larger wind farms, people have a lot of thoughts and ideas, about how to do it, whether to do it. And it's a complicated scenario, you know? Yeah.
But you're working on that. Yes, we're working on that. We're trying to kind of support good conversations, the availability of good information so people can decide for themselves what they think about the idea. Erik and the film crew leave the dock at Narragansett, Rhode Island.
They're on their way to the wind farm about an hour offshore. They'll spend the morning on Charlie Donilon's charter boat. Snapper. He's been in the fishing business a long time, and he's seen a lot of changes. Well, I don't know.
I started in 76, in 1976, and, you know, I think fishing was different than it was easier. There were more fish around. You know, the general population of the world has put so much pressure on fish because now people are concerned with health, and it trickles right down back to Rhode Island, where we fished a lot of things right out.
Dave Monti is on board too. He's a charter boat captain and journalist. He writes about fishing and the environment on top of that. He works as a consultant on renewable energy issues.
We build offshore wind for one reason, and that is for the energy. You know, the earth and the ocean are really taking a beating with the fossil fuel. The water's getting so warm. As you know, we have warm water, fish moving in our area, all the cold water fish moving out. So we see it on the water, a change in the abundance and type of fish that we have to fish for, and it's a climate change impact. So we need the renewable energy to help stem the tide on climate change.
While we take you out to the wind farm a bit about how it got here. Construction of the five turbines began in 2015. They went online in December 2016. The array sends power to Block Island and the mainland.
Diesel engines that used to create electricity for the island were turned off. They got a reliable source of electricity before they were generating electricity with diesel engines. Now they're now they're hardwired to the mainland. And by the way, there's also fiber optic in that cable. So. So it made a world of difference for businesses, you know, on the islands. As the boat approaches the turbines.
We appreciate their size. They stand about 330ft above the surface of the ocean. Each blade weighs 27 tons and reaches out 240ft. The turbines are operated remotely. And make note. We've got. These are numbered as we go on progression o1,2,3,4,5.
So one and four are operating at this moment. And an hour later you see another one and see what happened. You know how the other one get going.
There's no boat out here, but they're remotely controlled. I think Duke University has something to do with that. How has the the Block Island wind farm affected rec fishing here out of this port? I think it's a plus. We didn't knock em dead today, but we had a few fish. You could see some keepers, some were throwbacks. And usually at the end of the day, you know, everybody will have a few filets so you can have a meal out of it. But,
you know, the days where you're catching hundreds of pounds of fish, I think most people realize they're gone. These turbines are fixed to the ocean floor in about 80ft of water. Pilings were driven deep into the seabed when they were pounding in the foundations, 200ft into the ocean floor. It was disturbing the marine life.
Definitely. And that year, I remember catching fluke and they were quite plentiful because the microbiology and all that, all the marine life was being disrupted. But the following year, when the foundations were installed, it was back to normal. You didn't have the big bite like we had the previous year. And now it's been six years, I think it does definitely help, but not like that one year where, you know, the stirring up of the bottom definitely had an effect.
Got one. I think the science at Block Island, a seven year study that showed it studied fish abundance before, during and after construction showed that, black sea bass and cod were in greater abundance and everything else was pretty even so in control areas compared to the Block Island wind farmers. Squid was up. It was up by a corresponding amount. If fluke was down or cod was down in control areas, it was down in the wind farm by the same percentage. So that's why this research is absolutely necessary. For some fish species.
The turbines act as an artificial reef that's beneficial for recreational fishing businesses like Charlie's. Even tourists are attracted to the turbines. I do lighthouse tours.
I do whale watching. I mix it up, you know, and so when I heard about that, I said, that's got potential. And so that's when I started attending meetings. And every time there was an article or in a magazine or newspaper, I read up on it and I said, if this is done right, I can probably grow 10 to 15 trips a year.
And that's about what I average or taking people out. People, the other day came and, one party was just for fun. It was just to get together and all the people there, it was more of a technical thing. And I give them my little bible book.
You know, all the information's right there. Yeah. Oh, and I'm surprised now because, they've been in operation six years, and I'm still getting calls to take people out. But when you place structures like these in the ocean, not all the changes are good.
20 years ago, these sea bass were not here. Yeah. And the ones at work were very small. Yeah. And now we're catching fish in the 16, you know, by regulations that you have to be 16in. And it's amazing that how many sea bass have moved into the area and that's a good thing and a bad thing, because the lobstermen hate them, because the sea bass are eating all, all the lobsters. And,
you know, the lobsterman has to make his living. And there's a guy right next to him catching all the sea bass he can get, you know, 200 pounds commercially because he wants to make his livelihood. I served as one of the leads, for the University of Rhode Island in, the sighting and and the sighting of the Block Island wind farm. Jennifer McCann works for Rhode Island sea grant. She's part of a national network of 34 sea grant programs.
Sea Grant is a federal and university partnership that works with members of the community to keep coastal environments and economies healthy. Jennifer helped bring all the interested parties together long before construction of the wind farm began. And that included facilitating a multifaceted stakeholder engagement process, which included, engaging, actively engaging, and learning with and working with recreational and commercial fishermen, municipalities, unions, the tribes, other researchers. Again, to make sure that answers are, questions were being answered and government, whether it be the state or federal government, had the the answers that they needed to make the best decisions. As a charter captain, I've always felt privileged and honored to have a license to take people fishing. The ocean belongs to all the people of the United States of America.
It belongs to commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, even somebody living in Kansas. So it's important that if we have a natural resource like an ocean, that it be managed in such a way that all those people that use it have access to it. And in this particular, wind farm case, we had the luxury of, doing a little pre, spatial planning in the ocean as to where the Block Island wind farm, should go. And, at that table, there were commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, charter captains like myself.
There were people from tourism and real estate from the island of Block Island. So all the stakeholders, they were shippers. So all the stakeholders were at the table providing input into the process as to where these would be sited.
It was, it was like making sausage. It was, you know, a lot of input. I think the end product was great.
We had, commercial fishing buy off on that particular wind farm as well as charter, fishing industry buy off. In fact Charlie and I belong to the Bryan Party and Charter Boat Association, and we, were a little concerned about the fishing that would not be able to take place during construction. So the, the developer, which is now Orsted because they bought it, were very, agreeable to helping compensate us for not being able to fish in that area during construction. What you see off the coast of Block Island is very different from what might happen in the Gulf of Maine. The ocean is really obviously where I made my living, which my job was to catch fish, to feed, feed America so that I could sell those fish and feed my own family.
And so the Gulf of Maine especially, is very special place to me. And it has a very high level of food productivity and, has lots of regulations in place to to make sure that fish are harvested in a sustainable way. And so layering in wind farms on top of this, it's just another layer of complexity.
David Goethel has fished since he was only 13. He's made a living with his trawler, Ellen. Diane. He's also a research biologist. Fish in the Gulf of Maine migrate every year. They migrate towards shore in the spring and they migrate offshore in the fall.
So they cover pretty much the whole Gulf of Maine. It's the same with the shellfish. The lobsters to swim in in the spring and crawl off in the fall. And so while pieces of real estate may not be used 12 months a year, they've intensely used for two or 3 or 4 months periods and it makes it very difficult in this so-called sighting process to deal with that fact. And again, the other concern is these cables that run to shore and may seriously impact these migrations.
Most fish and shellfish migrate using very subtle, cues in changes in the Earth's magnetic field relative to their distance from the magnetic north pole. If the proposed Gulf of Maine wind farm gets the go ahead, it'll sit far offshore, unseen from land. There'll be a lot more turbines than what you saw off Block Island. And they'll be floating rather than fixed to the seabed.
Block Island is a monopile. It's. It's basically like a flagpole stuck out in the ocean.
You can get right up close to it. They probably have no anchoring zones where the cables are coming out of it, but, it's it's a very different thing than what's planned in the Gulf of Maine. Again, the, the the anchor cabling is probably going to be a foot in diameter. It's going to run a mile in every direction from the unit. And and then there's going to be something on the bottom roughly the size of a house that's going to be made out of concrete and steel that this thing is going to attach to. And somehow, as I understand it, this was to be enough catenary and those heavy cables to allow this thing to bob up and down in the waves and not tip over.
I think, in in regard to fishing, I think it's vitally important that you identify who fishes in the areas where the wind farms might go. And what do they catch? That would be commercial fishermen and recreational fishermen, because that tells you, what challenges you you might need ahead. And then there needs to. So that means there needs to be research done before, during and after the process to make sure that there's no unintentional, harm to habitat or fish. The Department of Environmental Services and the National Ocean Service have done a fairly good job of mapping where people fish in certain time periods.
That being said, they still have, fisheries that they haven't mapped because they don't know they exist. And they have, what I call point source mapping. So as an example, I fill out my logbook and it has one set of coordinates, even though I might have fished within 10 or 20 miles of that one set of coordinates. The same with the vessel monitoring system. It it pings you every half an hour. But I might tow in that half an hour or a mile to the east, turn around and come back a mile to the west.
And essentially it pings me pretty nearly the same place, but I've covered two miles, so I don't think it gives a clear enough picture of how heavily used the Gulf of Maine is. Other wind farms are being planned for and built along the southern New England coastline. David isn't alone with concerns about the possible effects.
I think the some of the major concerns that they have, are that, the wind farm is taking over geographic space that they normally fish in. And I think that, their deeper concern is that the structures, will, warm the water, the structures will, prevent, proper, habitat and growth of habitat and fish and be detrimental to their, you know, fishing effort overall. So that's why it's really important to have science address some of those concerns and learn as we go. IE, the Block Island wind farm was five turbines. The South Fork wind farm is 12.
The Revolution wind Farm will be, I don't know, 30, 35 maybe in its first phase. So, we have to make sure that we learn from each of these experience as a nation, pass it along to the next wind farm and just get get better about it. I think there is a responsible way of proceeding, and really that is to study first and then build afterwards. And, and take as an example, start, start these baseline studies now so we know what we had before we started. And then we can measure the change after we build it. Some people are excited.
Some people are worried. Do you have any advice for us up in New Hampshire or other parts of the country where we're starting to head into this? Here's something, up north you're getting a lot of lobsters and we don't we don't get them because our waters are warmer. But when these first started going in over in Europe, I think the, the lobsters over there are some that were affected and you talked to commercial lobstermen and I know some guys I'm friendly with and they say when these turbines are in and that cable is one, you know from out there out to the mainland and back out to Block Island, it's a known fact. It's proven that you're chasing lobsters from an area. There have been public meetings with stakeholders in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts.
Research about the possible effects to the Gulf continue. David thinks we need more time. The Gulf of Maine. It's my home.
I spent more time in the Gulf of Maine than I have literally my own backyard. I know it better just ask my lawn mower. And you know, I and I care about it.
I mean, I've worked my entire adult life to make sure the fisheries we're sustainable in the Gulf of Maine and things like, Aristotle Onassis oil refinery weren't built in Durham because I thought they were bad ideas for the for this part of the ocean. And I didn't see the benefits were worth the risks. And I feel the same way now that until the studies are done to prove to me that the benefits are worth the risks, we should not be proceeding in this direction. We should be looking at other ways of bridging the gap between shutting down coal fired plants and renewable energy.
I would much rather fish off the south side of Block Island, and not see a wind farm. But the reality the trade off is, is that, warming water and climate is having a profound impact on this nation, on this world and in my world. And the fishery world is having a profound impact, too.
So we need to stem the tide on climate change and renewable energy. And offshore wind is just one of the possible ways is absolutely necessary for us to get there as a nation and a world. How's it feel? It's amazing. I'm not used to it.
♪ Well, we have come once again to that part of the program that I like the least time we have to say goodbye. But we shell first we have to thank Erik for you're fantastic. You're full of great information. And you're as a cheerful as you've ever been since I knew you as a as an infant. Your father has been a dear friend of mine for 40 years at least, you know. Yes, he is.
So you'll take that sea bass you caught? Yeah. And eat it. Oh, okay. But you're not going to filet it. No, no, I'll leave that to someone who knows what they're doing. It's not pretty.
When I start to try to do those things, it'll be great. And oh, I will. I'll see you again, I'm sure, because we.
This the Gulf of Maine and the and the Gulf of Maine will continue. Always something going. Yeah. We'll be back. We'll be back. Okay.
Thank you Erik. Thank you. And and thank you all for joining us. I'm Willem Lange and I hope to see you again on windows to the wild.
♪ Support for the production of windows to the wild is provided by the Alice J. ReenCharitable Trust. Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Fuller Foundation, Road Scholar, and viewers like you. Thank you.
Make a gift to the wild and support the Willem Lange Endowment Fund, established by a friend of New Hampshire PBS, to learn how you can keep environmental, nature and outdoor programing possible for years to come. Call our development team at (603) 868-4467. Thank you. Okay. We need we need another fish there on the stern.
Yeah. Let's go. No pressure. Adam. World's best dressed fisherman. ♪
2024-12-29 20:36
