Mapping the Responses of Commercial and Recreational Fishing Vessels to Offshore Wind Energy Development in Southern New England

Document Type

Poster

Date of Original Version

3-27-2026

Abstract

Offshore wind energy development (OWED) in the United States is confined to the Outer Continental Shelf, where the industry competes for ocean space with other sectors, including fisheries. In Southern New England, USA, where fishing is a way of life and pillar of commerce, a decade of OWED has altered fishery dynamics and strained fishing communities. Since the completion of the first U.S. offshore wind farm in 2016 (Block Island Wind Farm), one utility-scale offshore wind farm is in operation (South Fork Wind) and two others are producing power and soon to be commissioned (Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind 1). Overlap between OWED and traditional fishing grounds is a contentious part of the planning process, creating socioeconomic challenges for fishers and potential ecological consequences for fish stocks. Perceived risks regarding the anticipated impacts of OWED on navigational safety, operational costs, critical fishing habitat, and the redistribution of fishing effort vary among commercial and recreational fishers due to factors such as vessel size, gear type, and target species. While progress has been made to understand the potential effects of OWED, information is still lacking about how patterns of vessel presence and fishing effort have changed in response to OWED and how responses differ between commercial and recreational fisheries. This study combines Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel-tracking data from Global Fishing Watch and vessel detections from high-resolution PlanetScope satellite imagery to compare patterns of vessel presence and fishing effort before and during stages of OWED between 2017 and 2025 for three offshore wind farms in Southern New England. Using a Before-After-Gradient design, we will assess how vessel activity near wind farms changes across different development stages and estimate how far these effects extend spatially. We hypothesize that hours of vessel presence and fishing effort spent inside or near the wind farms will be greater during the pre-development period and will increase with distance from the wind farms during periods of development. We also hypothesize that hours of vessel presence and fishing effort proximal to the wind farms will vary based on vessel size and gear type. By revealing the magnitude and spatial distribution of fishing effort displacement caused by OWED, our findings will inform fishing communities about their patterns of behavior, aid decision-makers in improving offshore wind planning, and allow resource managers to anticipate and proactively mitigate downstream effects instead of responding reactively once conflicts have already emerged. This study directly responds to calls for spatiotemporal monitoring of OWED impacts on fisheries and represents the first empirical, multi-stage assessment of its kind, addressing a critical gap in the global evidence base and providing a replicable framework for offshore wind planning worldwide.

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