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New England fishing captains held a floating protest near the damaged turbine at the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm.
The incident that got the local fishermen riled up occurred on July 13 when one of the blades on the turbine broke. No one was hurt but the island beaches were strewn with fibreglass shards and green and white foam. Even more debris was found later as the blade was deteriorating further.
Six Nantucket beaches were closed due to a clean-up of a large floating debris and fibreglass shards from the broken blade. The manufacturer of the damaged blade, GE Vernova, claimed that there was no indication of an engineering design flaw stating that the issue occurred due to faulty manufacturing.
The fishermen, who came out to protest in around two dozen boats, told local media that the debris in the water only made them more concerned about living surrounded by turbines. Some people on the ‘flotilla’ flew banners that read ‘Save Our Ocean’, ‘Support Your Local Fishermen’, and ‘Save Our Squid’.
The New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) organised the protest after people who were picking up blade debris from Nantucket beaches contacted Shawn Machie, a captain of a scalloper, to “try and do something before it’s too late”.
“We feel like our jobs are just accepted as collateral damage. Offshore wind is allowed to kill fish and wreck nurseries without any manageable stopping point,” Machie told US media.
The Vineyard Wind is not the first blade of this type to suffer damage. Two blades from a GE Vernova Haliade-X turbine failed at the Dogger Bank wind farm, one before and one after the Vineyard Wind one.
Environmentalist group Green Oceans even went as far as to call for a federal and state moratorium on all offshore wind development in the wake of the incident off Nantucket. |
