Resources

Webinars

Fisheries Input on NYSERDA’s Offshore Wind Master Plan 2.0

The Fisheries Technical Working Group (F-TWG) will be holding four sets of “office hours” this summer to gain fisheries perspectives on concerns and potential focus areas of floating/deepwater offshore wind in the Area of Analysis being considered in the Offshore Wind Master Plan 2.0. The goal of this engagement is to solicit input from the F-TWG to help identify areas in the region of greatest and least risk to environmental and fisheries resources and users and to recommend to BOEM areas or topics for further assessment.

The office hours will be:

If you’re a fisherman or represent the fishing industry and want to attend/participate, please *register here*. Registration is required to ensure participation is focused on fisheries stakeholders.

New York Bight Offshore Wind Farms: Collaborative Development of Strategies and Tools to Address Commerical Fishing Access

The goal of the NREL Project was to collaboratively develop technical strategies and tools to minimize disruption of commercial fishing within offshore wind arrays while also ensuring economical energy generation. The project completed an information gathering activity to identify regional needs and risks in the New York Bight. It also developed and analyzed a realistic set of offshore wind project scenarios to better understand how to reduce potential access restrictions to fishermen and minimize risk to vessels and gear. Additionally, the project identified and assessed a pilot project that provided a small-scale preliminary study to evaluate the applicability and feasibility of select mitigation measures. The NREL Project Final Report can be found here. The recorded webinars will be posted here when available.

Creation of a “Data Trust” for Effective Inclusion of Fishermen’s Knowledge in Offshore Wind Energy Decision Making

The main goal of RODA’s Project focused on developing an industry-owned knowledge trust that allows fishermen to own, use, and share their data while retaining granular control over its ownership, use and sharing.  The Trust was developed to also enhance the regulatory process for offshore wind and other ecosystem services by dramatically improving the overall understanding of the current state of fisheries and the ecosystems in which they operate. The project also provides a proof of concept for other fisheries and creates the data infrastructure to create effective and protected data products in a cost-effective manner. Additionally, the Trust may improve the understanding on “data poor” fisheries by aggregating proprietary data in a new way which presents an opportunity to dramatically improve current fisheries regulatory processes. The final report can be found here. The recorded webinars will be posted here when available.

NYSERDA Environmental Technical Working Group State of the Science Workshop

The 2022 State of the Science Workshop, hosted by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) was held from July 26-28, 2022, in Tarrytown, New York with a virtual session on September 21, 2022. This workshop brought together over 450 stakeholders engaged with environmental and wildlife research relevant to offshore wind energy development. Workshop sessions focused on assessing the state of the knowledge regarding offshore wind development’s cumulative effects on populations and ecosystems, as well as emerging collaborations to improve development and conservation. The recorded webinars can be found on the E-TWG website.

RODA Synthesis of the Science Workshop

The Synthesis of the Science Workshop is a collaboration between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA). The workshop consists of two integrated components, a virtual workshop and a published report, which together have the overarching purpose of enhancing regional and national understanding of existing science and data gaps related to offshore wind energy interactions with fish and fisheries. The virtual workshop’s plenary presentations were presented in October of 2020. Recordings of the presentations as well as relevant documents can be found on the RODA website.

NYSERDA Environmental Technical Working Group State of the Science Workshop

The 2020 State of the Science Workshop, hosted by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) was held virtually from November 16-20, 2020. This workshop brought together over 430 stakeholders engaged with environmental and wildlife research relevant to offshore wind energy development. Workshop sessions focused on assessing the state of the knowledge regarding offshore wind development’s cumulative effects on populations and ecosystems. The recorded webinars can be found on the E-TWG website.

Learning from the Experts: A Webinar Series

NYSERDA’s Offshore Wind team is hosting an educational webinar series entitled “Learning from the Experts” to connect the public with independent experts in key topics in offshore wind, including wind farm technologies, development practices, regulatory processes, and research initiatives.

To register for upcoming webinars, please visit the NYSERDA Announcements and Events page.

Commercial Fishing Webinars on Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind

On September 13, 2019 NYSERDA held two commercial fishing focused webinars to learn more about New York’s recently awarded offshore wind projects. The webinars briefly described the procurement process, Fishing Mitigation Plan requirements, how the New York State Fishing Technical Working Group (F-TWG) will engage with developers to evolve those plans, and more about how the selected developers will be working with the commercial fishing community to understand and minimize impacts of the projects.

To view the webinars for Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind click on the video links below