Socioeconomic Impacts of Atlantic Offshore Wind Development
December 06, 2022
Reports summarizing previous fishing activity within each offshore wind lease area and approved project area.
NOAA Fisheries developed reports summarizing fishing activity from 2008-2021 within each offshore wind lease area and currently approved project area along the U.S. Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina. Lease areas used for these reports reflect areas posted on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) website as of August 19, 2022.
Report Contents
For commercial fishing trips in each lease area, these reports highlight annualized landings and revenue by species, gear type, fishery management plan, port, and state; individual vessel fishing revenue dependence within the area; small and large business count and associated revenue; fishing effort (count of vessels and trips) by species, fishery, and port; and area-based annual landings and revenue as a percentage of total regional values for each species and fishery. Party/charter vessel reports highlight annualized kept catch by species and management category (a proxy for fishery management plan), annualized revenue based on passenger fees and number of anglers per trip, annualized vessel and angler trips by port, and vessel/angler dependence upon operations in each lease area.
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. We do not recommend these summary reports be used for project-specific analysis, but they can be used to identify fundamental data that are available and should be included in such an 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).
For more information about these reports or fisheries issues associated with offshore wind development, please contact Doug Christel.
Offshore Wind Lease Reports by Geographic Proximity from North to South
Gulf of Maine Planning Area
A report describing historical commercial and party/charter fishing operations within the planning area identified by BOEM in May 2022 is available upon request. Please note that this area may change in the future.
Massachusetts/Rhode Island
Bay State Wind (0500)
Beacon Wind (OCS-A-0520)
Mayflower Wind (OCS-A-0521)
- Commercial
- Party/Charter - An insufficient number of trips is available at this time to generate the report.
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 Shores Offshore Wind Bight (OCS-A-0541)
Attentive Energy (OCS-A-0538)
Community Offshore Wind (OCS-A-0539)
Empire Wind (OCS-A-0512)
Invenergy Wind Offshore (OCS-A-0542)
Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind (OCS-A-0544)
Ocean Winds East (OCS-A-0537)
New Jersey
Atlantic Shores North (OCS-A-0549)
Atlantic Shores South (OCS-A-0499)
Ocean Wind (OCS-A-0498)
Ocean Wind 2 (OCS-A-0532)
Delaware
Garden State Offshore Energy (OCS-A-0482)
Skipjack Wind (OCS-A-0519)
Maryland
US 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
- A report describing historical commercial and party/charter fishing operations within each of the call areas identified by BOEM on April 27, 2022, is available upon request. Please note that these areas may change in the future.
North Carolina
Kitty Hawk Wind (0508)
- 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.