Wind Industry Is Killing Sea Life On East Coast, Fishermen Say Biden administration is covering up the extent of the damage and ignoring warnings from top government biologists
by Donna Anderson
Posted on X by Michael Shellenberger
Over the last three years, we have been documenting the ecological catastrophe quietly unfolding on the East Coast. With the support of the US government, the wind industry is killing whales and other sea life. If nothing changes, the wind industry will make the North Atlantic right whale go extinct. It turns out the situation was even worse than we had imagined. Over the last six months, investigative reporter Donna Andersen interviewed dozens of fishermen, government officials, and scientists and has uncovered a scandal in plain sight: the wind industry is destroying the fishing industry. People are taking notice. Just today, the New York Times published an article documenting growing resistance by the fishing industry. Why now? In part because of the recent collapse of a giant wind turbine blade off the coast of Massachusetts, which scattered jagged pieces of fiberglass along the beaches of Nantucket, threatening the boats of fishermen and local tourists. Please take a moment to read Donna’s outstanding investigation below! — Michael Shellenberger
When the offshore wind developers came to his ocean, James “Ace” Auteri, a commercial fisherman for 50 years, did his best to cooperate. Auteri is a pot fisherman. He caught sea bass in pots eight miles southwest of his home port of Montauk, New York. Thirty miles to the east, near Block Island, Rhode Island, he caught lobsters. The South Fork Wind Farm, with 12 turbines located 19 miles southeast of Block Island, was completed on Mar. 24. Now electric power flows through a high-voltage export cable for 66 miles and comes ashore in East Hampton, New York. The cable passes right through both of Auteri’s longtime fishing grounds. So far this year, the sea bass fishing is okay. But lobsters? “There are no signs of life at all,” Auteri said. Commercial fishermen all around Block Island are telling similar stories. Ever since the wind farms came to the ocean, lobsters are hard to find. Formerly productive scallop beds are dead. Cod have disappeared.
Vineyard Wind’s broken wind turbine, which scattered fiberglass across ocean and beaches. South Fork Wind is owned by Orsted, the Danish energy giant. Orsted has a Marine Affairs team “committed to helping fishermen and other mariners thrive in and around our offshore wind farms,” according to its website. It doesn’t seem that way to Ace Auteri. “Last year they were supposed to be done by June with the trenching,” he said. “I told them I had to get gear in by the end of July. They tore up all the bottom, and when I put gear in, there were no lobsters.” Orsted used a 50-foot-wide underwater plow to dig a trench for the export cable, Auteri said. Then they used big cranes to move the boulders. Auteri ironically observed that for years, the government has regulated local fishermen to save the lobsters. “All the things they told us we had to do, and then they let them come in and tear up the lobster grounds,” he said.
