Abstract
In 2015, Vineyard Wind 1 LLC (Vineyard Wind) leased a 675 square kilometer (km2) area for renewable energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf, Lease Area OCS-A 0501, which is located approximately 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard off the south coast of Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind is conducting fisheries studies in a 306 km2 area referred to as the “VW1 Study Area, ” which is the focus of this report. Fisheries studies were also conducted in Vineyard Wind shareholder company lease areas. This includes Lease Area OCS-A 0534 (the “534 Study Area”) and Lease Area OCS-A 0522 (the “522 Study Area”); these studies were reported separately.1
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has statutory obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act to evaluate the environmental, social, and economic impacts of a potential project. Additionally, BOEM has statutory obligations under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ensure any on-lease activities “protect the environment, conserve natural resources, prevent interference with reasonable use of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, and consider the use of the sea as a fishery.”
To address the potential impacts, Vineyard Wind, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), has developed a monitoring plan to assess the potential environmental impacts of the proposed development on marine fish and invertebrate communities. The impact of the development will be evaluated using the Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) framework. This framework is commonly used to assess the environmental impact of an activity (i.e., wind farm development and operation). Under this framework, monitoring occurs prior to development (Before), and then during construction and operation (After). During these periods, changes in the ecosystem will be compared between the development site (Impact) and a control site (Control) to assess if there is any impact due to the development of wind farms. The control site will be in the general vicinity with similar characteristics to the study area (i.e., depth, habitat type, seabed characteristics, etc.). The goal of the monitoring plan is to assess the impact that wind farm construction and operation may have on the ecosystem within an ever-changing ocean.
The current monitoring plan incorporates multiple surveys utilizing a range of survey methods to assess different facets of the regional marine ecosystem. The trawl survey is one component of the overall survey plan. A demersal otter trawl, further referred to as a trawl, is a net that is towed behind a vessel along the seafloor and expanded horizontally by a pair of otter boards or trawl doors (Figure 1). Trawls tend to be relatively indiscriminate in the fish and invertebrates they collect; hence, bottom trawls are a generally accepted tool for assessing the biological communities along the seafloor and are widely used by institutions worldwide for ecosystem monitoring. Since they are actively towed behind a vessel, they are less biased by fish activity and behavior than passive fishing gear (i.e., gillnets, longlines, traps, etc.), which relies on animals moving to the gear. As such, state and federal fisheries management agencies heavily rely on trawl surveys to evaluate ecosystem changes and to assess the abundance of fishery resources. The current trawl survey closely emulates the Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (NEAMAP) survey protocol. In doing so, the goal was to ensure compatibility with other regional surveys, including the National Marine Fisheries Service annual spring and fall trawl surveys, the annual NEAMAP spring and fall trawl surveys, and state trawl surveys including the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries trawl survey. The NEAMP survey protocol has also been adopted by trawl surveys conducted in other offshore wind development areas in the northeast US by other institutions. The bottom trawl survey is complemented by the drop camera survey and the lobster trap survey in the same area, also carried out by SMAST (reported separately).
The primary goal of this survey was to provide data related to fish abundance as represented by catch per unit effort (CPUE), distribution, and population structure in the VW1 Study Area and an adjacent area (Control Area). Offshore construction activities for the Vineyard Wind 1 project began in the spring of 2023. The data will serve to assess the impact that offshore construction activities have on fish communities. The reports for the first three years of pre-construction baseline monitoring from spring 2019 to summer 2022 have been submitted to the sponsoring organization. This progress report documents the survey methodology, survey effort, and data collected during the fall of 2023.