Wind turbine bases act as reefs

In video, marine life thrives in new, artificial habitats

BOSTON — Offshore wind proponents are touting new undersea footage that suggests a vibrant marine habitat is growing around the nation’s first offshore wind farm — a five-turbine operation off Rhode Island’s waters.

The American Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, says the 2-minute clip it posted on YouTube this week shows the potential for the nation’s fishing industry as larger projects are envisioned up and down the East Coast.

“The turbine foundations are now acting as an artificial reef,” said Nancy Sopko, the wind energy association’s director of offshore wind and federal legislative affairs.

But the video does little to temper the concerns of commercial fishermen, who are worried about navigating dense forests of turbines to get to their historic fishing grounds, says Jim Kendall, a former scallop fisherman in New Bedford, Mass.

Offshore wind developers from New England to the Carolinas are racing to build the nation’s first largescale wind farm. Many of the projects call for hunroughly dreds of turbines to be built miles away from shore, sometimes within or along the path to lucrative fishing spots.

The wind energy association video shows beds of mussels taking shape and small fish swimming around the turbine bases. The brief underwater footage is juxtaposed with longer testimonials from local recreational fishermen and charter boat owners.

But commercial fishermen are notably absent from the video, and it doesn’t acknowledge the experiences of Rhode Island fishermen who say they’ve had their trawling gear damaged by buried power cables, countered Daniel Farnham, co-owner of Silver Dollar Seafood, a seafood wholesaler in Montauk, N.Y.

“Unfortunately this does not tell the whole story,” he said.