In response to recent concerns over offshore wind and with debris washing up on Nantucket and Island beaches from a fractured turbine blade, the New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) has organized a “flotilla” for this Sunday, bringing fishing boats together to peacefully protest in unison against the offshore wind industry.
Boats will be joining together in a “boat parade” from various areas of the east coast, said NEFSA founder and CEO Jerry Leeman, including the Vineyard, Nantucket, parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and potentially New Jersey.
NEFSA is a fishing industry alliance. The nonprofit pushes “the conscious and respectful management of the ocean and the life it holds.”
Leeman said he and other fishermen are frustrated, and have several concerns regarding offshore wind and turbines that haven’t been answered.
“There’s pieces of blades already on our ocean floor here,” he said. “Is anyone going to tell me how we’re going to pick that up?”
According to the flier that organizers have circulated through social media, all boats will meet at the site of the broken Vineyard Wind turbine on Sunday.
For non-boaters, protestors will gather for a “hands across the beach” event along South Beach in Katama, forming a human chain on Sunday.
The hope with this protest, said Leeman, is that their pleas against offshore wind are seen and heard.
NEFSA, a more productive use of resources would be to organize future fishing expeditions near the windmill towers. The shellfish 🦪 love the tower. The fish 🐠 love the shellfish. You’re going to get rich off those towers!
Mary — you are absolutely correct about the shellfish— fish
love them and so do I. It is ridiculously simple
to put a ring a few feet below “high tide” and standing off a foot or 2
around these things,
And another ring say 40 ft down and run “mussel friendly”
lines between them–presto — Instant mussel farm.
If the lines were spaced about 12 inches apart, that would
provide 80 “mussel lines” per tower.
that’s 3,200 ft of “mussel line” per tower, or over 37 miles
of prime mussel growing habitat on the VW project alone.
How about suspending oyster cages from them ?
Or seaweed lines ?
A solidly anchored 25 ft diameter tube in the open ocean
is a fantastic opportunity for the aquaculture community.
Perhaps we could start thinking about what we can grow
in the ocean rather than just focus on what we can catch and kill.
Stop those hideous, environmentally destructive wind farms now! We don’t want tours to wind towers. We don’t want Disney-like entertainment in these waters. More blades failing in other farms too. Just terrible…
J., where should our electricity come from?
Maybe we should live our lives without electricity?
Or fossil fuels? Walking, bicycling, washing our clothes in cold water, using donkeys to pump water out of the ground?
Yes Mary let’s all move to Bangladesh. Oh sorry that’s racist.
What a pathetic response. Where was everyone years ago when these Guillotines were being discussed?
What have they killed?
Do they puke thousands of gallons of oil?
We tried and tried to stop them! Went to numerous meetings. Fell on deaf ears. All about the money, sadly.
How much fossil fuel will they use to organize this flotilla?
Less than the 98,000 gallons of oil that leaked out of the barge Bouchard 120 on April 27, 2003 when it hit a ledge at near the head of Buzzards Bay. That oiled 100 miles of shoreline and impacted tidal marshes, mudflats, beaches, and rocky shorelines.
Are we showing that the Vineyard experienced less than a five-gallon bucket of foam collected from the county beaches? Has any actual injuries been reported at any hospital in the region?
We bumped into a dead whale and we filled the back of our boat with debris from the turbine blade. There are millions of pieces of the 70T blade scattered from MV to Cape, Block Island and Newport RI. These blades are made up of “forever chemicals”.
How many tons of sunk boats are in our waters?
Styrofoam coolers?
The sky is falling…
Ms. Hansen, could you please verify your information?
I think the info can be verified in the 1984 handbook, “Let’s Love To Hate MV, Not Just The Fishermen and Women, But The Whole Dang Place,” newly revised with chapters on “Mopeds Are Fun”, “Let’s Pave Paradise” and “Building Bridges, Who Needs Islands Anyway?” I believe the handbook was written by people in Cleveland who’ve never been to Martha’s Vineyard, but hope to see it become another Jersey Shore development.
Jackie, that handbook is not science, however it is not at all useful verification. LOL
Yes, I posted a video last week.
Shelly — I’ll verify some information for you about Mary’s comment.
“Numerous fish species, including cod, halibut, and flounder, feed
on shellfish. They often have specialized teeth or methods to
deal with the hard exteriors.”
https://earthlife.net/what-eats-shellfish/
And really ? you need some “verification”
that shellfish will grow on a tower in salt water ?
Maybe not quahogs, but mussels certainly will.
Mussels are shellfish.
Protest with with fiberglass boats and Styrofoam coolers.
Toss old line and nets overboard.
We where part of the flotilla yesterday in protest of vineyard wind, tried fishing for hours around the turbines with no success the place is a desert, so shameful we where the only Island fishermen who showed up, the size of this project is disgusting. Shellfish surviving out there is a pipe dream and another green lie. This offshore project needs to be stopped.
Suzie, I agree that liberals are spreading green energy lies. Renewable wind is an expensive, inefficient, intermittent form of energy. Dangerous to birds and marine life. Noisy sound pollution and visual pollution. Apparently not durable due to manufacturing defects, design flaws and high velocity storms leading to high cost clean ups and water contamination. Hazardous to navigation. Higher demand for electric vehicles and AI will create higher electric prices for residential, commercial and industry. Wind and solar are not viable to expand to manage this increased demand. Unfortunately our current administration has stalled investment in oil and natural gas. In addition, the administration has delayed construction of pipelines and LNG export facilities. These issues will lead to higher inflation for everything.
Roy, are you spreading information about brown, oil, energy?
yes
The liberals loathe all fossil fuels so we give them wind turbines to replace fossil fuels and they loathe them. How does one satisfy a liberal??
I think you’ll find not many fishermen are liberals.
I think you’ll find many are…
Maybe us fisherwomen count?
Liberals do not loath wind turbines.
Some loath being able to see them.
Like Conservatives and oil production platforms.
Nothing is simple.
Albert. I love oil production platforms and want more. I desire productivity, efficiency, and the capacity to feed and clothe and protect another billion people even though those things are not a basic human right.
Remember when liberals used to oppose large industrial encroachments on natural places like forests and the ocean? Remember when the extremist environmental activists would execute borderline terrorist acts against logging and oil projects? I would think the far leftists would be scaling these windmills and chaining themselves to the blades screaming slogans and outing the wind companies as just being ploys by big oil to further “their destruction of the earth”.
I hope you all know that the oil industry is the major money behind these windmills and their motivation is two fold: major tax credits from the feds and gaining the carbon credits that are necessary to allow them to continue to operate their refineries in other states. The environmental impact statement for Vineyard Wind (found on BOEM’s website) states that the project will have zero effect on climate change. You can have your own opinion but you can only try to make up your own facts.
Bill, let’s work together to put solar panels on every rooftop and exit the grid.
Then we don’t need the oil barons interfering in our lives.
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