The Trump administration’s order to stop construction of the nearly completed Revolution Wind project is putting hundreds of offshore workers out of a job — including dozens of local fishermen who voted for President Donald Trump and are asking him to reverse course.
A week ago, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Matthew Giacona, ordered the Danish wind developer Ørsted to stop all offshore work on the Revolution Wind farm so the federal government can“address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.” Giacona did not specify the nature of those security concerns.
Construction began on the 704-megawatt project in January 2024 and is now 80% complete, according to Ørsted. The wind farm is being built off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in a federally designated “wind energy area” that received sign-offs from multiple branches of the military, Canary Media reported Sunday.
They increasingly rely on part-time salaries from wind companies as fishing revenues dry up. Over the past two years, Ørsted put 80 fishermen to work on the Revolution Wind project, paying out $9.5 million to captains, deckhands, and fishing boat owners, according to Gary Yerman, a Connecticut-based fisherman who founded and leads a fisher cooperative called Sea Services North America, which has an active contract to work on Revolution Wind.
“Most of us are Trump voters, and we still believe in a leader who builds. That’s why we’re asking President Trump to reverse the stop-work order issued to Revolution Wind by Interior,” Yerman told Canary Media.
The stop-work order echoes a similar one the Interior Department gave in April that froze all offshore work on New York’s Empire Wind project — a move that grounded Sea Services’ fishermen for a month, until Trump lifted the ban.
Yerman and other commercial fishermen remained quiet the last time Trump’s assault on a wind farm put them out of work. This time they’re speaking out.
“It’s madness to stop a project that already had permits,” said Jack Morris, a Massachusetts-based scalloper and manager for Sea Services who voted for Trump. “This is not something any of us planned for: the captains, the crew, the shore engineers, the people we buy food from for our trips.”
Ørsted was one of the first firms building turbines in U.S. waters to employ local fishermen, offering Sea Services a contract in 2021 to perform safety and scout tasks. The cooperative helped build Ørsted’s South Fork Wind — America’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, which went online last year.
Today, it’s common for wind developers to rely on local U.S. fishermen. Avangrid and Vineyard Offshore, codevelopers of the embattled Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, have paid out about $8 million over the past two years directly to local fishermen and vessel owners.
“If the infrastructure and pilings are already in, what good is stopping now?” fisherman Tony Alvernaz told Canary Media when asked about the Revolution Wind pause. A Massachusetts fisherman unaffiliated with Sea Services, Alvernaz works part-time for Vineyard Wind, assisting with the ongoing construction of its 62 turbines. Of those, 17 are already sending power to the grid.
Alvernaz is concerned about the Trump administration’s pattern of halting wind projects without warning and with little justification. Trump has already pressed pause on two of the five offshore wind farms currently under construction in America today.
Trump putting fishermen out of work
In a statement Monday, an Ørsted spokesperson said Revolution Wind supports more than 2,500 jobs around the U.S., including “hundreds” of local offshore jobs.
Commercial fishermen have spent a total of 1,109 days working at sea for Revolution Wind, according to Yerman. Now, sitting at the docks due to the Trump administration’s stop-work order, the 15 fishermen who planned to be at sea, working 10-day shifts throughout this month, will get paid nothing.
“Our cooperative only invoices when our boats are on active duty. Fishermen are paid for the days they work, not for standby,” Gordon Videll, CEO of Sea Services, told Canary Media. The group is calling on Trump to lift the ban so that its members can resume the job, which would have involved eight more fishermen helping with an offshore substation this fall.
