NEWPORT, Ore. — From her home overlooking Yaquina Bay on the Oregon coast, Kelley Retherford can watch as commercial fishing boats arrive at the nearby Port of Newport, delivering their catch to one of several seafood processors that line the waterfront.

Saltwater is in her family’s blood, she said. Along with her husband, Mike, and their four adult children, they own and operate four fishing trawlers, harvesting everything from hake to pink shrimp and Dungeness crab.

“It’s a way of life,” Retherford said. “We’re not boats on the water. We’re families on the water. We’re families feeding families.”

That way of life, however, may be disrupted by a growing interest in offshore wind generators to help achieve ambitious government-mandated zero-carbon energy goals.

Earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, identified two “call” areas off the southern Oregon coast — one near Coos Bay and the other near Brookings — to assess potential wind energy leases in federal waters.

Auctions for leases have already been proposed in two areas off the California coast, as the Biden administration aims to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind generators by 2030.

The push to harness wind energy in the Pacific Ocean has raised concerns within Oregon’s $1.2 billion commercial fishing industry, with families such as the Retherfords worried it will limit access to highly productive fisheries and impact the marine ecosystem.

“There’s got to be better options,” Kelley Retherford said. “I will fight to protect my family, our community, our fisheries and our livelihoods.”

Development areas

On April 27, BOEM published details about two call areas designated for offshore wind development in Oregon.

The Coos Bay Call Area begins 13.8 miles offshore of Charleston, Ore., and is 67 miles long and 41 miles wide. The Brookings Call Area begins 13.8 miles offshore of Gold Beach, and is 46 miles long and 22 miles wide. Together, the areas encompass 3,759 square miles.

A 60-day comment period ended June 28 for developers to nominate locations within the two areas that would be best suited for wind projects.

At least one builder, Deep Blue Pacific Wind, nominated three such locations in its bid to build the Northwest’s first floating offshore wind farm.

Deep Blue Pacific Wind is a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, an offshore wind developer based in Ireland, and TotalEnergies, a French energy company with its U.S. headquarters in Houston. In January, the venture hired Peter Cogswell as director of government and external affairs.

Cogswell is based in Portland, and is the former director of intergovernmental affairs for the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets electricity produced in the region. He said Oregon is particularly attractive for offshore wind due to a “world class” resource and policies to achieve 100% “clean” electricity by 2040.

Rather than being fixed to the seabed, turbines in the Pacific would have to be built on floating platforms to capture wind where it blows the hardest. Cogswell estimated it would take between 50 and 60 turbines to generate 1 gigawatt of energy.

“There’s a lot to like about this resource,” he said. “It’s a very high (capacity) for a renewable form of generation.”

Dueling processes

BOEM spokesman John Romero said the call areas are meant to identify where offshore wind “may be safely and responsibly developed,” while soliciting feedback from the public.

Getting to this point took years of planning, Romero said. In 2010, then-Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski requested an intergovernmental task force be formed between BOEM and state agencies, led by the Department of Land Conservation and Development, to study offshore wind.

That process emphasized collaborating with local governments, tribes, coastal communities and other ocean users to identify the call areas, Romero said.

At the same time, Oregon lawmakers passed House Bill 3375 during the 2021 legislative session. The bill directs the state Department of Energy to analyze how it can integrate 3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy onto the electrical grid.

Jason Sierman, a senior policy analyst for the department, is leading the study, which is due back to the Legislature on Sept. 15.

Their goal, Sierman said, is to gain a better understanding of the challenges and benefits related to offshore wind.

“It would provide a great resource to meet those 100% clean energy targets,” he said. “Three gigawatts is a big number, but in order to meet the 100% clean targets of all these western states, it’s going to require hundreds of gigawatts of new resources to be built somewhere.”

On the other hand, part of the challenge is where exactly to site the wind farms and how to mitigate their impact on ocean users, he said.

“Economic impact to the fishing economy is a big one I’ve heard a lot about,” Sierman said. “Fishers may potentially have their customary ocean areas inaccessible — at least a fraction of them — from projects being potentially sited in these ocean areas.”

Losing ground

Losing fishing grounds inside the call areas could be harmful to fishermen along the Oregon coast, said Heather Mann, executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative.

The areas are particularly bountiful due to the California Current, which provides a strong upwelling of water and nutrients for seafood. Mann estimated more than 25% of Pacific whiting harvested in the last decade has come from the two call areas proposed by BOEM.

Pacific whiting is the largest commercial fishery off the West Coast of the U.S. and British Columbia, Canada.

“The wind resource that the developers want is part of the (California) Current benefit that also creates great fishing opportunities,” Mann said. “People have been harvesting (seafood) out of those two areas for decades and generations. They have been very productive fishing areas.”

The Retherfords are one example, with three generations of the family taking to life on the ocean.

Aboard the Coastal Pride, Chris Retherford and his 16-year-old son, Christian, worked alongside the crew performing maintenance and filling the boat with diesel fuel before heading out to catch pink shrimp. Trips typically last one to four days, depending on the season.

On the bridge, where Retherford captains the ship, he flips on his automatic identification system, a computerized map that allows him to view other boats broadcasting their locations. The system shows fishing boats crossing through BOEM’s designated call areas where large wind generators would be anchored.

“We go to where the fish are,” he said. “Up and down the whole coast, the waters are alive and well. We use most of the waters out there.”

Need for renewables

The drive for 100% clean energy in Oregon has raised the stakes for building new renewable energy projects statewide — including offshore wind generators.

House Bill 2021, signed by Gov. Kate Brown in 2021, requires retail electricity providers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity sold to Oregon consumers by 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.

To get there, Nicole Hughes, executive director of Renewable Northwest, a Portland-based advocacy group, said offshore wind is vital.

Renewable Northwest was part of a coalition that published a study in July, analyzing what it will take for Oregon to achieve the benchmarks set under HB 2021.

“The one thing that was consistent across all scenarios was that offshore wind is needed,” Hughes said. “Our view is that this is an amazing opportunity for the state, both as being needed to meet our clean energy goals but also as an economic opportunity.”

Hughes said the push for offshore wind could give rise to a new industry in Oregon, providing manufacturing jobs and infrastructure in coastal communities that have been economically depressed with the decline of the timber industry over the last four decades.

“We need to make sure we’re going to do it right so it benefits all Oregonians,” she said.

Cogswell, with Deep Blue Pacific Wind, said he expects the agency to hold a lease auction later this year if everything goes according to schedule.

Across the country, developers spent $4.4 billion in February purchasing offshore wind energy rights in the New York Bight between Long Island and New Jersey.

Once a specific project is proposed, Cogswell said it will initiate a deeper environmental analysis before going ahead with construction. He said it would likely be a decade or longer before any wind turbines are in operation.

“You’re going to have to balance the benefits with … how they affect existing uses around fishing, and the effect they’ll have on the environment,” he said.

More questions

Caren Braby, marine resources program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said that while the BOEM task force has exchanged plenty of data, more time is needed to comprehend what it all means for the ecosystem.

“I think it’s fair to say there isn’t a place within either of these call areas where something isn’t happening,” Braby said.

In addition to displacing fishermen, Braby said turbines might at least partially interrupt wind from its natural function of upwelling ocean water. She compared it to blowing on a cup of coffee, stirring cream up from the bottom of the cup.

“The turbines are, by design, capturing wind,” she explained. “There’s just one total of wind resource. You are, by definition, splitting it. It’s not clear how much impact that will have, but it is measurable.”

However, Braby also acknowledged that climate change is having an impact on the ocean, contributing to acidification and low-oxygen areas impacting key fisheries.

“It is with that frame that we look at renewable energy development proposals,” Braby said, adding that ODFW is “very interested in alleviating some of our reliance on fossil fuels.”

Slowing down

Mann, with the Midwater Trawlers Co-op, said she hopes the industry’s concerns will prompt state agencies and BOEM to slow down their process.

“We see an opportunity with HB 3375 to actually understand what these risks and benefits are,” she said. “I feel confident that if the study comes out and is truthful, that legislators will look at that say, ‘Wow, this is akin to the oil and gas exploration we banned.’”

Several state and federal lawmakers are also urging BOEM to slow down and fully consider impacts on coastal communities before moving forward with leasing.

In a letter to BOEM Director Amanda Lefton, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio said the Coos Bay and Brookings call areas should be moved beyond a depth of 1,300 meters to minimize displacing commercial fishing.

“Fishing grounds have been steadily shrinking for decades and coastal communities up and down the Pacific coast continue to suffer economic and cultural loss,” they wrote.

Further limiting fishing grounds in the call areas “could spell economic disaster for these towns,” the letter continued.

Kelley Retherford said the fishing industry will continue to push back against the call areas, fighting for their livelihoods.

“We don’t want new jobs. We don’t want a different career,” Retherford said. “We spent our lives as a fishing family, and we’re going to spend our future as a fishing family. We will survive, and we will be resilient.”