PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 19, 2021
Offshore wind development is not a new conversation. The past 10 years have been wrought with obstacles, mistakes, contention and failure, and now, rather than learning from these mistakes, the current administration is full steam ahead to develop the ocean at an unprecedented pace with an alarming lack of consideration for the pandemic and other existential threats looming over Maine’s fishermen, like gear reduction in both the lobster and groundfish fishery because of hypothetical right whale entanglements. Maine fishermen are not opposed to identifying solutions that support the health of the environment. Fishermen are asking for the administration to do better before they spend billions of dollars on one of the most expensive forms of electricity and industrialize the ocean. When small family fishing businesses are displaced and shuttered, we will forever lose access to another renewable resource: food. ~ Jason Joyce, fisherman, Swan’s Island; Linda Greenlaw, fisherman and author, Surry