Fishermen may not like offshore wind, but some work for it

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NEW BEDFORD — A fishing boat named Saints and Angels sat docked at Leonard’s Wharf after a recent fishing trip. Ice covered some of the deck as a man cut into the boat’s steel side to create a door for scientific buoy deployment. Nearby vessels were being worked on, some with anti-offshore-wind flags whipping in the wind. Just the American flag flew on the Saints as Tony Alvernaz climbed up to the wheelhouse.

The blue-hulled scalloper, built in 1997, started out as a tender boat, transporting loads of fish between vessels and processing facilities. After a few years catching tuna, the vessel brought in over a million pounds of scallops over its life. But times, regulations and fish stocks have changed. The bivalves are still relatively lucrative, but vessels have spent more and more days sitting at the docks while expenses have risen. 

So two years ago, Alvernaz, the part-owner of six scallopers, put aside his personal feelings and did something he never thought he’d do: He signed up to work for an offshore wind company. 

In about two years, Vineyard Wind has paid about $8 million to local fishermen and vessel owners — many from New Bedford, like Alvernaz — to provide safety and security work during the wind farm’s construction (a figure that includes fuel costs).

About 45 fishing boats have worked as safety vessels, guard vessels, science vessels and scout vessels on the project, which remains under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. This could mean sitting at a site 24/7, guarding scour protection before the monopiles go in, identifying and transmitting locations of fishing gear to be avoided, or moving through the wind area looking out for and alerting other vessels of activity. 

It’s an example of collaboration and co-existence amid what has been a contentious relationship between the two industries. 

The dispute dates back a decade, to when offshore wind projects were first proposed on the East Coast, and tensions have remained quite high since. This fall, in one waterfront kerfuffle, while top state officials celebrated a new terminal to support offshore wind (among other uses), a New Bedford police officer asked a captain to take down the anti-offshore wind flag on his vessel. Outside, a separate group protested offshore wind. 

Fishermen hold legitimate concerns. Offshore wind projects may impact fish ecosystems, fishing operations, and long-standing federal fisheries surveys that inform the quotas set each year.

Because conflict can’t be avoided, wind companies earmark millions of dollars to compensate fishermen for lost days at sea, damaged or lost gear, loss of fishing grounds, and increased fuel costs to transit around the wind farms. Vineyard Wind established a $19 million fund for Massachusetts fishermen, which is separate from the safety vessel contracts. 

Alvernaz, 62, said vessels get $6,000 a day from Vineyard Wind for the safety work — far less than the $20,000 to $30,000 that he estimates a scalloper could earn from fishing on good days. But $6,000 is also better than $0 sitting at the dock, and his crew gets paid. 

Four of Alvernaz’s vessels are enrolled in the program. Together, they’ve done about 40 days of work at the Vineyard Wind project, or around it. They captured foam debris following the blade failure in July, following the flotsam to Newport, Rhode Island, and Montauk, New York.  

While a salvage company retrieved blade pieces from the ocean bottom this fall, Alvernaz kept an eye out for any debris that broke off.

Vineyard Wind pays for fishermen’s training

But before taking their first trip for Vineyard Wind, fishermen had to check several boxes: drug tests, safety training, and classes and exams to earn or renew licenses. They put in the time to meet those standards without the guarantee of a job opportunity.

Vineyard Wind pays for or reimburses the fishermen for the above, as well as the boat inspections and more to prepare the captains and their vessels. And there are no strings attached.

“It’s not like you have to work for Vineyard Wind. They’re still going to help you put all this stuff together and you can work for someone else,” said John Verissimo, a former fisherman and now-consultant for Vineyard Wind, who describes himself as a bridge between the wind company and waterfront. 

Vineyard Wind has put about 175 fishermen through classes for licenses or safety training, but not all of them have gone on to work for the company.

The fishing boats may also require vessel upgrades, which happen on Vineyard Wind’s dime. Some vessels don’t have AIS, a system that transmits the boat’s location to other vessels; others have a “class B” system. To work at the windfarm, though, vessels need a “class A,” which costs about $2,000 to $3,500. 

In November, Vineyard Wind paid for installation on four vessels in New Bedford — three scallopers and one clammer. It costs the company another $1,500 to $2,000 per vessel for installation labor.

Dave Frank, owner and manager at Fairhaven-based Chris’ Electronics, estimates his business has outfitted 25 to 30 local vessels for Vineyard Wind. He’s done electrical work on the Foss tugs, which lead the barges to and from the wind farms with the major turbine components. 

“It’s definitely not the same money as they’d make fishing, but it’s better than sitting at the dock,” Frank said. 

“The boats need a leg up,” said Verissimo. “It might not be a lot, but it makes a difference to these guys. Some of the guys, it makes a big difference.”

Complicated feelings

The Light asked Alvernaz how he thinks he’d be doing without this extra work from Vineyard Wind: “I don’t even want to imagine,” he said. 

Alvernaz shows an appreciation for the engineering behind this massive infrastructure project: He shares photos he’s taken offshore of the giant jack-up vessel that installs the components. He recounts watching a remote operating vehicle with arms retrieve pieces of the broken blade from the ocean bottom. He praises how Vineyard Wind has dealt with him. 

But he also forcefully criticizes offshore wind as an industry — as well as the federal government that has greenlit it.

He disagrees with where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has sited several wind farms, some which will overlap with important scallop grounds. The ocean has many stakeholders and when drawing out the lease areas, regulators must account for conflicts between those interests. They use computer models to try to “deconflict” the competing interests and find solutions. In some cases, they avoid a fishery. In other cases, they allow construction in fishing grounds. 

“BOEM, this administration, sucks eggs: just lease, lease, lease the whole ocean,” Alvernaz said. “Why don’t you come out to the [fishing] industry and say, ‘Look, where can we put these?’”

And though he casts aspersions on offshore wind, he also gets criticism from its opponents: fellow fishermen. 

“I’m out there doing security, and I get, ‘ya traitor!’” over the radio,” Alvernaz said. “I get on the radio and I say, ‘Come back, ya momma what?’”

“You have to do the thing that’s uncomfortable sometimes,” said Mike Quinn, president of Shoreline Offshore, discussing the criticisms and concerns from the fishing industry. “Somebody’s gotta do it; it might as well be fishermen.” He added that he thinks they are overqualified for some of the offshore work.

Quinn and his family own a sizeable fleet of 12 scallopers, some of which are part of  Vineyard Wind’s safety vessel program. He said he wanted a seat at the table when offshore wind started to be seriously discussed, and now sits at several, including on the board of the New Bedford Ocean Cluster. 

He would not say how much he and his family’s companies have earned from working on the wind project. But he confirmed their businesses had invested millions to help support the nascent industry — including the recent launch of a New Bedford-built barge to provide docking for offshore wind vessels. 

“[Offshore wind] is backed by the government. There’s nothing I can do complaining about it,” Quinn said. “I would rather have a seat at the table, and provide jobs to local people.” 

In addition to providing more work for fishing crews, the project has allowed some older members to continue working on the boats, as it’s easier on the body than fishing, Quinn said.

Frank, like Alvernaz, put aside his personal views of offshore wind. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but “I can’t run a business that way.” He estimates offshore wind accounts for just under 10% of revenue, which helps during their slow season. 

Building a model

About two years ago, Crista Bank, fisheries manager for Vineyard Offshore, brought together several fishing vessel owners, including Alvernaz and Quinn. She didn’t yet have money budgeted to contract them, but she wanted them to name their price — one which they’d all have to agree on — to conduct safety work during the project’s yearslong construction phase. 

It wasn’t in Vineyard Wind’s original construction plan or budget, but Bank said she quickly saw the need and made the case for it internally.

Bank already had a reputation on the New Bedford waterfront. She’d worked for years at the local marine science school as a fisheries biologist, sometimes conducting research on fishing boats. But it took time to build trust, especially as she now represented a wind company. 

She continues to have an important rapport with fishermen — a stock that doesn’t mince words. 

“I had it out with Crista,” Alvernaz said. “They were sitting at the dock, I don’t know how many years ago, talking about wind. And I was like, how dare you?”

Bank was expecting this.

“I started to work with some local fishermen, and some of the fishermen I also knew from my previous work. And they’d be like, ‘I can’t believe you’re working for offshore wind,’” Bank told The Light. “And I said, ‘Well, would you rather have somebody like me in his role that understands the challenges you’ve already been through … or someone that has no idea?’”

She joined the project in part because she wanted to ensure they did not get left behind.

“We are not their first challenge,” Bank said. “They have been dealing with challenges for a long time. And having the developers understand that might make them realize why the resistance to this. As businesspeople, what’s your risk? We always talk about risk in the offshore wind world.”

“Well, for fishermen, offshore wind is a risk because it can potentially change the habitat. … They’re the ones that will be out there fishing next to us, and I want to work well with them. And I’m hoping we can both benefit from this,” she said. 

Bank established direct contracts with the local captains — no middleman, who could skim some of the payment and make communications more difficult.

“It’s a very personal working relationship,” Alvernaz said, praising Bank and her team. “She is fair. She wins us some battles.”

Bank also aimed to build a program that would keep the fishermen fishing.

“The model that was out there… is the opposite to the approach I’ve taken,” Bank said. “I do not want to take fishermen away from fishing… I do not want to take a fishing vessel and turn it into an offshore wind vessel. And that model is in Europe. You have fishing vessels that are support vessels for offshore wind, but they don’t really fish anymore.”

Her program, to date, seems a success. Bank said she has received more than 200 applications from fishing vessels (some recreational or from other states) to contract with the company. She’s worked with about 45 for safety work, a figure that includes fishing vessels that have helped during the pre-construction phase with data collection.  

“There’s people on that list, we’ll put it this way, that are publicly, vehemently against offshore wind,” she said, “but if I have a job I can use, I will go back to them.” She stressed she does not hold their personal views about offshore wind against them. 

There’s more demand than work opportunities, so she connects vessels with other contractors working on the project if she has no jobs. She has also seen project subcontractors hire local fishing boats directly without her involvement, including for work on buoy deployment or inter-array cable installation. 

To encourage local hiring, her team created a database of interested fishing vessels that it shares with organizations and contractors. They’re building it out to include basic vessel specs and information (if, for example, the boat has done buoy deployment or offshore wind safety work, or if it’s equipped with an A-frame). 

She shared anecdotes of advocating for fishermen to the foreign and big companies Vineyard Wind works with (who often prefer other big companies to contract with), and dispelling stereotypes and misconceptions they held about New Bedford’s storied fishing fleet. 

She recalled one instance in which a company was having trouble retrieving a weather buoy; they connected with Alvernaz, who had no issues completing the retrieval. 

In sharing this, she says she hopes the wind industry and its contractors see the value the local fishing fleets can offer. 

SouthCoast Wind may also hire fishermen

Alvernaz would like to see SouthCoast Wind, a project set to occupy the Marine Commerce Terminal after Vineyard Wind finishes construction, follow its predecessor’s model. 

Alvernaz recently met with the company. In response to an interview request, Sam Asci, SouthCoast Wind’s fisheries manager, confirmed that the company is engaged with fishermen about working with their vessels during construction and operations.  

“We recently held a listening session in New Bedford to gather insight from local fishing vessel owners/operators who have experience supporting offshore wind development” and “to learn about the many roles fishermen currently fill and could potentially take on in future projects,” Asci said in an email statement. 

“My hat’s off to [SouthCoast Wind],” Alvernaz said. “If anything, Vineyard Wind was like the prototype of what worked and what didn’t, so they are actually going to benefit from that.” 

Some developers use a third party to employ fishermen, as it’s easier to contract with one company, which would then contract with multiple vessels that could be local — or not. 

But Bank emphasized the importance of wind developers contracting directly with local vessels. For Vineyard Offshore’s planned project in New York, for example, she is hiring a vessel out of Brooklyn. 

Alvernaz credits the wind company with opening doors to other contracts after it gave him a job for buoy retrieval. 

He intends to expand his non-fishing work, as his boats spend fewer than 40 days fishing per year. In recent years, he’s helped with research trips for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NOAA Fisheries, and plans to add a crane to the Saints and Angels to make it more research-friendly. Offshore wind is just the latest work that keeps his engines running. “A boat is like a plane,” Alvernaz said. “A plane you have to fly.”

His other vessel, Chatham, eased into port in mid-December, returning from a trip off Massachusetts with 12,000 pounds of scallops on ice below deck. This month, one of his vessels will head back out to Vineyard Wind for more security work. He hasn’t picked which one he’s sending yet. 

“I’m a businessman. I sure as hell can’t stop [offshore wind],” he said. “One of my captains said, ‘I don’t have to like you to take your money.’ One hand washes the other.“

Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.

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