Will offshore wind hurt the Morro Bay fishing industry?
Bill Blue has been commercially fishing Dungeness crab and black cod near the shores of Morro Bay for 47 years.
It’s a business that he got into when he was 19 years old.
“That’s all I know. That’s what I do,” he said.
Blue’s business has survived in an industry that has faced growing regulations and shrinking territory during the nearly five decades he’s operated off the Central Coast.
Now, proposals to develop a massive floating offshore wind farm in the Pacific Ocean near Cambria may diminish Blue’s fishing grounds by 399 square miles — an area more than twice the size of Lake Tahoe.
The proposed offshore wind farm got a green light from Biden administration officials with support from California Gov. Gavin Newsom on May 25, after years of negotiations between federal, state and local governments.
Along with Newsom, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl announced the advancement of the proposed offshore wind farm in a call with reporters, touting the economic benefits of the project and clean energy it will generate.
The wind farm would be located northwest of Morro Bay, about 17 to 40 miles offshore.
The Morro Bay call area — the area in which a wind farm may be built — could hold enough wind turbines to generate up to 3 gigawatts of energy at max production. That’s enough to power about a million homes with non-emissions producing electricity.
A lease sale auction for the Morro Bay call area may happen as soon as mid-2022.
But local fishermen are raising alarm bells, saying they worry the proposed wind farm will seriously hurt the fishing industry.
About 50% of Blue’s annual income comes from the black cod he catches in the Morro Bay call area.
Erecting wind turbines in the ocean there would likely force him and others who fish rock cod, albacore tuna, salmon, prawns, swordfish and black cod, also known as sablefish, to completely abandon the area.
“What we’re seeing is the government going ‘Drop everything. We have to do this right now: clear all the obstacles, push the fishermen off the map,’ “said Alan Alward, secretary of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the local fishing industry.
Alward, together with Tom Hafer, president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization, and Steve Scheiblauer, a federal appointee to the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Habitat Committee, says that the voices of local fishermen have seemingly gone unheard by the federal and state government agencies that are tasked with collaborating on the proposal to build the offshore wind farm.
“At one time the call area was 120 square miles and so that’s what we decided on and that’s what the fishermen and the city thought was going to happen — and it didn’t,” Hafer said. “Then it grew immensely after that ... Now they want to take away almost 400 square miles. And so we’re basically screwed.”
“I’m quite concerned that this feels like a gold rush — that the nation and offshore wind developers are just rushing for this as a solution that will help with climate change without really thinking about the consequences,” Scheiblauer said.
Government agencies recognize impact on fishing industry
Federal, state and local politicians and agencies all say they have been in contact with fishermen regarding the proposed offshore wind turbines and that they aim to mitigate and reduce any impacts to the fishing industry wherever possible.
Several ongoing studies funded by BOEM aim to find out what those impacts are exactly. Any conclusions drawn now about what may happen to the local fishing industry are based solely on estimations by wind turbine companies, government agencies and studies conducted on the few existing wind energy farms in Europe and the eastern United States — most of which have fixed-bottom ocean wind turbines, not floating wind turbines.
Central Coast Congressman Salud Carbajal, a member of the Offshore Wind Working Group that’s worked to develop wind turbines off the Central Coast, said he has held “several meetings with local fishermen and consistently worked to make sure their voices are heard throughout this process.”
However, Carbajal added that “we haven’t seen a wind project of this scale on the West Coast before, so we shouldn’t have preconceived ideas until we gather more information and learn about the benefits it brings and any potential impacts.”
John Romero is a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the lead agency on any offshore wind energy developments in federal waters — including the proposed Morro Bay call area.
Romero told The Tribune that the agency is “committed to continuing to work with all users of the ocean, including the fishing community.”
“Their input will be carefully considered throughout our planning and leasing decisions,” Romero wrote in an email. “Our goal is to avoid or reduce potential impacts to fisheries from offshore wind energy development.”
The California Coastal Commission has federal Coastal Zone Management Act authority over any offshore wind development because of the potential impacts to the coastal zone, which extends three miles offshore.
The state agency will have two opportunities to review the offshore wind farm proposals: first during BOEM’s call for leases and then again once a construction plan is submitted by the company or companies that may build the offshore wind turbines.
During both of those reviews, Kate Huckelbridge, the Coastal Commission’s deputy director of energy, ocean resources and federal consistency, said the agency will be looking to see whether the proposed developments are consistent with the California Coastal Act, which mandates the protection of coastal resources and “the economic, commercial and recreational importance of fishing activities.”
Huckelbridge acknowledged that offshore wind development will impact fishing.
“There really is no way to completely avoid any impact to fishing if you’re going to pursue offshore wind,” she said. “It’s a large-scale development that takes up a lot of ocean space and is based where fishermen are. That’s how they make their livelihood.”