Socioeconomic Impacts of Atlantic Offshore Wind Development
May 03, 2024
Reports summarizing previous fishing activity within each offshore wind lease area and all lease areas combined.
NOAA Fisheries has developed reports summarizing fishing activity from 2008-2022 within each offshore wind lease area and all currently approved lease areas combined along the U.S. Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina. For some approved projects, the reports include data on impacts within the lease area and finalized export cable corridors. Lease areas and export cable corridors used for these reports reflect areas posted on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) website as of November 16, 2023.
Report Contents
Commercial fishery reports include the following information:
- Annual landings and revenue by species, gear, fishery management plan, and state
- Minimum/average/maximum annual landings and revenue for the most impacted and dependent ports;
- Individual vessel fishing revenue dependence within the lease area
- Proportion of annual regional landings and revenue harvested within each lease area and species-specific landings and revenue for the most affected landing ports
- Small and large business count and associated revenue
- Fishing effort (count of vessels and trips) by species, fishery, and port
- Lease area annual landings and revenue as a percentage of total regional values for each species and fishery
- Links to NOAA’s Fishing Community Snapshots and port demographic information
Party/charter fishery reports include the following information:
- Annual kept catch by species and management category (proxy for fishery management plan)
- Annual revenue based on passenger fees and number of anglers per trip
- Annual vessel and angler trips by port
- Vessel/angler dependence upon operations in each lease area
Both commercial and party/charter reports include links to NOAA’s Fishing Community Snapshots for the most impacted ports for each lease area, which provide detailed information on fishery dependence and economic and demographic characteristics.
Data and Methods
The commercial fishing summaries are based on combining data from vessel trip reports (logbooks) and dealer reports submitted by those issued a federal fishing vessel permit for species managed in federal waters (i.e., outside of three nautical miles from shore). The methods used to determine area fished for each trip from logbook data are similar to those used to develop our Fishing Footprints page. The party/charter fishing summaries are based on combining kept catch and angler data from logbooks submitted by vessels issued a federal party/charter permit with the average annual angler fee per state derived from periodic NOAA surveys of party/charter operators (see Lovell et al., 2020).
Vessel logbook and dealer report data are current as of November 15, 2022. This site and the associated reports will be updated once annually in June using the most recent fisheries data and offshore wind lease areas available on BOEM’s GIS website.
Utility
These reports can be used to help identify the major species harvested, affected fishery operations, potential revenue impacted, and ports/states affected by offshore wind development in each lease or planning area. However, because they are based exclusively on data submitted by vessels permitted by the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO), they do not include data for all fisheries that may be affected by projects from Maine through North Carolina, including state-managed fisheries, fisheries managed by the NMFS Southeast Regional Office, or highly migratory species. While these reports can be used to identify fundamental GARFO data that are available, such data must be supplemented by other sources for a complete evaluation of potential fishery impacts. Therefore, we do not recommend these summary reports be used by themselves for project-specific analysis.
Data users are strongly urged to coordinate with NOAA Fisheries' staff to discuss data limitations (see pages 6-7 of our Information Needs document) and submit an area/project-specific data request to acquire the most accurate and updated data when preparing socioeconomic impact analysis for individual projects. Data requests should be submitted to nmfs.gar.data.requests@noaa.gov at least one month before data are needed.
This project is a joint effort of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (Dr. Geret DePiper, Dennis Corvi, Marina Chaji, Angela Silva, Scott Steinback), NOAA’s Office of Science and Technology (Dr. Eric Thunberg), and the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (Douglas Christel, Benjamin Galuardi, and Nicole Morgan).
For more information about these reports or fisheries issues associated with offshore wind development, please contact Douglas Christel.
Offshore Wind Lease Reports by Geographic Proximity from North to South
Cumulative Impacts of All Greater Atlantic Region Lease Areas Combined
Reports describing historical commercial and party/charter fishing operations within all Greater Atlantic Region lease areas combined (i.e., those specified from Maine through Cape Hatteras, North Carolina) are available below. Please note that these reports include impacts to fisheries along export cable corridors for approved projects when available. The impacts summarized in these reports represent a worst case scenario of potential impacts to fisheries and communities based on historic operations. They do not reflect staggered construction schedules or adaptation by fishery participants, which may help delay or offset impacts if vessels adapt to fishing elsewhere.
Gulf of Maine Proposed Lease Areas
Reports describing historical commercial and party/charter fishing operations within the Gulf of Maine proposed lease areas identified by BOEM on April 30, 2024, are available below. Please note that this area may change in the future as final lease areas within the Gulf of Maine are identified.
- Area 0563
- Area 0564
- Area 0565
- Area 0566
- Area 0567
- Area 0568
- Area 0569
Massachusetts/Rhode Island
Bay State Wind (0500)
Beacon Wind (OCS-A-0520)
SouthCoast Wind (OCS-A-0521)
New England Wind (OCS-A-0534)
Revolution Wind (OCS-A-0486)
South Fork Wind (OCS-A-0517)
Sunrise Wind (OCS-A-0487)
Vineyard Wind 1 (OCS-A-0501)
Vineyard Northeast (OCS-A-0522)
New York
Atlantic Offshore Wind (OCS-A-0541)
Attentive Energy (OCS-A-0538)
Community Offshore Wind (OCS-A-0539)
Empire Wind (OCS-A-0512)
Vineyard Mid-Atlantic (OCS-A-0544)
Bluepoint Wind (OCS-A-0537)
New Jersey
Atlantic Shores North (OCS-A-0549)
Atlantic Shores South (OCS-A-0499)
Invenergy Wind (OCS-A-0542)
Ocean Wind 1 (OCS-A-0498)
Ocean Wind 2 (OCS-A-0532)
Delaware
Garden State Offshore Energy (OCS-A-0482)
Skipjack (OCS-A-0519)
Maryland
US Wind (also known as Maryland Offshore Wind) (OCS-A-0490)
Virginia
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Research (OCS-A-0497)
- Commercial
- Party/Charter - An insufficient number of trips is available at this time to generate the report.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial (OCS-A-0483)
Central Atlantic Bight Call Areas
Reports describing historical commercial and party/charter fishing operations within the Central Atlantic proposed lease areas identified by BOEM on December 11, 2023, are available below. Please note that these areas may change in the future once BOEM identifies final sale areas later in 2024.
OCS-A-0567
OCS-A-0568
North Carolina
Kitty Hawk North (OCS-A-0508)
Please note this includes the data for the entire original lease area 0508, but does not differentiate between the current version of Kitty Hawk North (lease OCS-A-0559) and Kitty Hawk South (lease OCS-A-0508, the remainder of the original lease OCS-A-0508), as depicted on BOEM’s mapping website.
- Commercial
- Party/Charter - An insufficient number of trips is available at this time to generate the report.
Commercial Fisheries Data Download Website
The Commercial Fisheries Data Download Website allows users to download commercial fisheries landings and revenue data by year, species, fishery management plan, and offshore wind lease area. These data are the same as those used to generate the commercial and party/charter fisheries reports above.