F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
Most Renewable Food Resource
Topics on the New England fisheries table this fall include lobster trap endlines, a bait shortage, an expansion of aquaculture bottom leases and wind energy development.
Offshore wind energy development is expected to affect fishing operations. It will displace fishing by constructing generators and corridors for power cables to shore on or near fishing grounds. There may be yet unknown causes of fisheries displacement as well.
The concerns the fishing industry has expressed over ocean wind energy development plans are real. Among them the scale of fisheries exclusion, the impact on the marine environment, the re-impact when wind generators reach the end of their 20 year life span and inadequate project developer transparency. The probable unintended consequences of rushing through any kind of project development and the almost inevitable influence of private interests via Congress on government projects are also on the list.
An example of the latter might be the U.S. government’s 1969 Stratton Report on U.S. fisheries. That report described a near bottomless ocean groundfish resource. It called for the industrialization of the U.S. fishing industry to compete with other nations. Twenty-five years later that industrial model was declared a resource bust. A bust ultimately used to privatize the groundfish resource through catch shares.
According to recent polls the majority of Americans believe global warming is a current serious threat. A shrinking minority says it thinks it’s some kind of hoax.
The science, which includes an estimated 95% of scientists globally, indicates the globe is warming. Records indicate it has been for the last 50 years. The northern part of the globe is warming the fastest. The hardest hit have been coastal communities and flooded farmland. If the globe and the oceans continue to warm at the current rate all commercial fishing could be permanently displaced.
The kind of renewable energy development needed at this late date is large scale, industrial and internationally cooperative. The pace needed is emergency. The globe united in cleaning up the results of 150 years of petroleum based industrialization could become part of an interim replacement of the oil economy and a geopolitical unification strategy.
The world has to immediately address climate change with renewable energy resources. That should not come at the expense of the world’s most renewable food resource harvesters.