For too long, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has put American fishermen’s livelihoods at risk and disregarded their expert input. The agency has pursued a thoughtless political campaign to construct offshore wind projects along American coasts that disrupt local fish stocks and harm ecosystems. [emphasis, links added]
At last, the tides have turned. Coastal fishermen and everyone else who relies on fresh fish to feed their families can rest assured that the bureau is halting its offshore wind projects on federal land.
This move gives fishermen a fighting chance to protect the large, high-value fishing zones we have fished and stewarded for generations. It will allow us to keep our businesses open and support our families.
Although BOEM’s directive will not cancel the lease areas that had been fast-tracked for development before President Trump’s reelection, it ensures that pending lease sales, especially to foreign energy companies, will not move forward.
The bureau previously designated more than 3.5 million acres of unleased federal waters for offshore wind development across the Gulf of America, the Gulf of Maine, the New York Bight, California, Oregon, and the Central Atlantic.
The process for designating these areas fast-tracked huge industrial developments while ignoring the needs of fishermen who rely on stable ecosystems beneath the waters.
For decades, BOEM has put climate politics above human needs, common sense, and the expert guidance of fishermen. Thanks to this new directive, the voices of American fishermen will finally be heard.
The bureau’s recent decision respects fishermen’s firsthand knowledge of sensitive ocean life. Needless to say, building wind turbines taller than the Washington Monument and Seattle’s Space Needle can be disruptive.
As just one example, researchers have found that electromagnetic fields from cables beneath the water cause defects and deformities in lobster larvae. Magnetic “B fields” from cables threaten young haddock and limit their ability to swim, according to a PNAS Nexus study from 2022.
Wind turbines elevate the sea surface temperature, causing forceful water disturbances that destroy fish populations.
BOEM’s move to scale back its coastal energy projects also has the potential to reverse a tragedy that fishermen have warned of for decades. Just one year after the United States began offshore wind surveys, the increase in the number of humpback whale deaths along the East Coast has been alarming.
The correlation between offshore energy project development and whale deaths suggests that stopping the former would save the latter, a win for everyone.
Beyond saving marine life and stabilizing ecosystems, reducing offshore wind projects lifts an immense and damaging regulatory burden off the U.S. fishing industry.
Each time a wind turbine is built off the coast, fishermen and their families are the first to suffer.
After a 300-foot wind turbine blade broke and shattered off the coast of Nantucket in 2024, fishermen in the area had to dodge fiberglass shards in local waters and lost essential revenue from having to avoid otherwise plentiful fishing grounds.
These costs have far-reaching consequences for local fishing communities already suffering from job scarcity and crippling poverty.
The marine port in New Bedford, Massachusetts, supports nearly 40,000 local jobs, and in Washington County, Maine, commercial lobster fishing is the third-largest source of income.
Despite the bureau’s recent directive, more work remains. For starters, New York state’s Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, which were recklessly rushed into implementation by the Biden administration in 2024, must be immediately halted or seriously reevaluated.
If allowed to continue, these two projects are on track to wipe out commercial fishing in essential Mid-Atlantic zones by denying fishermen in New York and New Jersey access to highly productive fishing grounds.
Read rest at Washington Times
