F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

Consultants to the Observers



By now most everyone has heard of plans to build wind energy fields in the Gulf of Maine. The Department of Energy has geared up for the project. Engineering advances in wind turbine design have made wind energy look more profitable to investors and that will likely hasten the pace to completion.

A less publicized industrialization plan for the northeast is offshore fin fish aquaculture. This project will be promoted to investor groups as well. Both these projects will be built, expand and consume ocean bottom currently being used by others, primarily fishermen. Their footprint, not limited to the bottom under them, will be measured by their scour, the down stream effects from construction and use.

No one who isn’t heavily invested in coal and oil companies or paid by them, argues that we don’t need cleaner alternative renewable energy sources immediately. The math on the probable effects of the California agricultural drought and the mid west grain belt floods is simple enough. Divide national food security by that total and the dividend is that we should not be jeopardizing the northeast’s most valuable renewable food resource, the Gulf of Maine, by hastily constructing an exit strategy from past mistakes.

Engineers build things. Ideally, built to last and on budget. They are not marine biologists or people who make their living from the sea. Fin fish aquaculture in the U.S. will be built by the investors who are drawn to proposals written by federal fisheries managers and bankers. They too are not people who make their living from the sea nor are they necessarily marine biologists with foresight.

The NOAA ocean planning process underway in the northeast needs people who do make their living from the sea to engage with and inform that process. Engage not to stop the projects, but to help guide them to a more productive outcome for everyone. Engage to protect the sustainable resource that has been and should remain there.

Offshore may be out of sight, out of mind for developers and investors, but it isn’t for the people who work, support their families and supply us with food there. The resident stakeholders who know and rely on this resource should be the consultants to the observers.