Fishermen Endangered by Offshore Wind’s Political Power
Apparently left out of this cozy relationship is one keenly affected group: more than 1 million people in the U.S. who work in the seafood industry, including 158,811 commercial fishermen. Fishermen have been shouldering longer hours and more expenses as private equity takes over their industry. Now, they are grappling with the prospect that offshore wind farms will box them out of fishing areas and further imperil their livelihoods.
For generations, East Coast fishermen have plied the same waters where turbines the height of 70-story skyscrapers will soon be spinning. The Atlantic’s Outer Continental Shelf is comparatively shallow, making it easier to anchor turbines deep in the ocean floor. Steady winds blow through the entire year. But it’s also along the shelf’s ridges that currents mix and sunlight penetrates, allowing microorganisms and fish to flourish in a complex ocean ecosystem.
Federal scientists, the commercial fishing industry and industry regulators each have sounded the alarm about potential harm to fish spawning habits and about the lack of compensation for losses suffered by fishermen who will be displaced by the offshore wind industry. The Interior Department has ignored or downplayed those warnings.
The foolish Americans haven’t brought their fishing industry to heel like we have here. Ours aren’t bitching like that because they know for every government policy that costs them money they will be amply compensated with increased welfare payments.
I’m sure the fishermen could ensure that the windmills never get built or produce any power if they put their minds to it.
The need the Indians
So, about the height of San Francisco’s Millennium Tower. You know, the one that’s trying to fall over.
Hmmm… Maybe….
*Grabs cocktail napkin, scribbles furiously*
Cocktail napkin SEZ…
===> 4-1/2 years if the fishermen don’t help things along.
I’m so old I remember when Greenpeace used to run around in their boat trying to save the whales. Now they might as well be holding the harpoons.
A little off topic but pertinent to the conversation of unintended consequences. These wind farms are playing havoc with the whales and dolphins on the oceans, there was a report a number of years back that on land they are a menace to the lowly ground worm and now we have another unintended consequence to consider……
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/electric-vehicles-heavy-parking-garages-report
So the battery weight is causing these EVs to put additional stress on buildings not structurally built for the weight, the battery weight causes reduced tire mileage, the batteries require additional insurance premiums to be charged, charging batteries on a massive scale will stress the grid, so can anyone tell me what is the advantage to these vehicles? What is the advantage of investing billions of tax dollars in technology that cannot provide the power that we will require to, never mind grow the economy, but to ensure the standard of living that we had, let me emphasize that we HAD, just ten years ago?
Any electrical engineers out there who can indicate how all this electricity is pumped ashore?
I somehow doubt that the cables are buried beneath the ocean floor.
SO: lots of quite-substantial LIVE cables draped on the shallow seabed.
How many of these fishing boats are trawlers, which, as the name suggests, drag their nets ALONG the sea floor, scooping up all manner of goodies.. The nets are weighted to facilitate this. SO: what happens when a net snags a power cable that was not there in the previous season?
If it does not “rupture”, a seriously snagged net may cause the stern of the boat to “dive” as power is applied to free it. Once the sea starts rolling over the transom, a trawler becomes a one-way submarine fairly quickly.
If the crew manages to cut the snagged net away before such a disaster, they have basically dumped thousands of dollars worth of essential “tools of trade” overboard.
Regarding the actual “generator” towers: what is the life expectancy of a steel structure rigidly anchored in sea water? Hurricane “proofing”? How many Kilotonnes of copper are going to be draped across the ocean floor? Low-voltage / high-current, or high-voltage / low current?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
The grade of actual engineering in this proposal is in the negative realm. However, there appears to be a LOT of POLITICAL SCIENCE involved.
Those fisherman will learn to bait their hooks with dead birds soon enough.