For most of his life, Paul Kujala has called himself a fisherman. The Warrenton local owns and operates a small bottom-trawling vessel that he uses to catch sole, sablefish and rockfish — but over the last few years, he’s had his eye on a new technology he fears could threaten that work: floating offshore wind.

Kujala isn’t the only one.

For months, fishermen and others who work in the fishing industry have been calling on the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow down its process for two proposed wind energy lease areas — a 61,204-acre site 32 miles offshore in Coos Bay and a 133,808-acre site about 18 miles off the coast of Brookings — citing economic and environmental concerns for communities up and down the coast. Those concerns were amplified last month after the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians filed a lawsuit against the bureau and Gov. Tina Kotek sent a letter urging the bureau not to move forward with a long-anticipated Oct. 15 lease auction of the two sites.

With potential bidders for the leases backing out, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced it would be delaying the auction.

The news comes as a sigh of relief to many in the fishing industry, but it isn’t the end of the conversation. As the state begins working through its own road map for offshore wind and the federal process hangs in the balance, fishermen are asking for more time to understand the impacts of floating offshore wind.

An untested technology

BOEM’s Oregon proposals are part of an effort to meet a goal set by the Biden administration to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind energy by 2035. According to the bureau’s estimates, the two areas have a combined capacity of around 3 gigawatts — enough to power around a million homes. That’s not insignificant as the United States faces increased demands for reliable renewable energy, said Bryson Robertson, director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center and a professor at Oregon State University.

But BOEM’s vision also carries unknowns.

For most offshore wind projects, including the bureau’s projects on the East Coast, turbines are bottom-fixed, or connected directly to the sea floor. On the West Coast, however, the water is much deeper, requiring a different technology where turbines sit on a floating platform anchored to the sea floor with a mooring system. That technology is still relatively untested, with only about a dozen projects globally, Robertson said.

The proposals along the West Coast would put the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in new territory, and deeper territory than ever before. While leases for projects in the Atlantic are typically no more than 60 meters deep, the lease areas in Oregon range from 567 to 1,531 meters, BOEM public affairs officer John Romero told The Astorian in an email.

Those unknowns have left fishing and seafood processing advocates apprehensive.

“We’re gambling here,” said Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association. “We’re rolling the dice on what is an unproven technology at this point, and we don’t know a lot about how it’s going to play out.”

Although the lease areas avoid 98% of the waters recommended for exclusion by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service, representatives of the fishing industry say they still include historically significant fishing and spawning grounds.

Without an extensive body of research to draw from, it’s unclear exactly how the technology would affect benthic species, fish aggregation and migration in those areas. However, fishermen have raised concerns about multiple turbine blade failures that have occurred in recent months, and have drawn a correlation between marine mammal deaths on the East Coast and offshore wind farms.

“We really want to understand what the impacts will be,” said Heather Mann, executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. “How do the electromagnetic waves coming off these machines and cables — how does that impact crab behavior? How does that impact whales and how they navigate? How does it impact salmon and how salmon navigates? So those are just a lot of unknowns.”

Industry advocates say floating wind turbines would also physically interfere with fishing. Trawling, for example — one of the most cost-effective methods of fishing — requires fishermen to drag a net through the water column near the ocean bottom. That practice would become impossible in areas with extensive mooring lines in the way, said Yelena Nowak, director of the Oregon Trawl Commission.

“I think at first breath, everyone thinks, ‘Oh, this is fantastic, it’s renewable, this is great, we need this. It’s not taking up land, we don’t have to look at it, it’s far offshore — like what could be wrong?’” Mann said. “But when you start peeling back the layers, you see that there could be problems.”

‘A ripple effect’

Although the lease areas are sited in southern Oregon, fishermen worry potential offshore wind projects would have much farther-reaching impacts. If fishing were to suffer in areas like Brookings and Coos Bay, Nowak said, fishermen would be displaced to other areas along the coast like Astoria.

Kujala has seen that kind of displacement before.

Decades ago, when a rockfish conservation area was established in Washington state, he recalls that many fishermen moved south to Oregon. Although he typically keeps his fishing boat close to home, he knows other local fishermen who venture farther south to get a catch — and he fears offshore wind projects in those areas could create more competition on the North Coast.

“The more stuff you close, the more it shoves people into different areas,” Kujala said. “And so it does have a ripple effect off the coast.”

Steele anticipates the same kind of ripple effect for seafood processors. The West Coast Seafood Processors Association represents eight companies, four of which — Pacific Seafood, Bornstein Seafoods, Da Yang Seafood and Fishhawk Fisheries — are based in Astoria.

“Our boats fish everywhere, you know — we rely on vessels that rely on the wind energy areas for fisheries, so even though the areas are further south, it doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a direct impact to our businesses here in Astoria,” Steele said.

Part of the frustration, Steele said, has been what she perceives as a lack of meaningful engagement in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s process.

For several years, BOEM has worked with an intergovernmental panel meant to coordinate with federal, state, local and tribal government partners. Steele said people in the fishing community have had ample opportunities to provide public comment to the panel, but they haven’t had a back-and-forth dialogue. After those public comments are submitted, it’s unclear what happens with them.

“If the industry had been engaged in collaborating with BOEM in a meaningful way from the start, the wind energy areas wouldn’t be where they are right now,” she said.

In order to determine the boundaries for wind energy areas, BOEM goes through a spatial planning process where it considers conservation areas, fishing grounds and other mapping recommendations to find areas with the least conflict.

Romero said BOEM has adapted its process in some ways — for example, providing draft wind energy areas for an additional public comment opportunity and removing the southern portion of the Brookings draft wind energy area to preserve a long-standing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration survey corridor and avoid sensitive seafloor habitat in the area.

“BOEM is committed to working closely with Tribal nations and local communities, and other ocean users to ensure all decisions are transparent and based upon the best available science and knowledge,” he told The Astorian in an email. “Our process includes early engagement with Tribal governments, state and federal agencies, ocean users, local communities, and the public.”

No ‘silver bullet’

At the same time as BOEM has been pushing ahead in its federal process, Oregon leaders have been developing their own offshore wind road map set to be completed in 2025. Steele, Nowak and Mann have all praised Kotek, a Democrat, for calling for a pause on the lease auction until the road map is complete and the impacts of floating offshore wind are better understood.

Looking ahead, they hope the pause will provide a chance to observe the outcomes of floating offshore wind projects further along in California before moving ahead with Oregon activities — a route Nowak says is the only responsible path forward absent a test facility.

“Why don’t we wait and see, what impact will that have?” Nowak said. “What’s the rush to industrialize this pristine marine region?”

On the other hand, Robertson, of the Pacific Marine Energy Center, said there’s an argument to get the ball rolling sooner than later. Even if BOEM eventually grants a company a lease, it isn’t a green light to start building. A lease only gives exclusive rights for leasing activities like surveying and collecting data, and that process could take years. It would also include additional opportunities for public input and an environmental impact statement on proposed construction.

“I argue that sitting around for 15 or 20 years to understand what the potential impact is doesn’t seem like the greatest plan when we have a really significant challenge with regards to increasing demand for electricity and decreasing supply of electricity,” he said. “We need something so we can keep the lights on in the state, and we might as well start this 10-year process now, understanding that there are extra steps, there are ways for us to get out of this if it doesn’t tick the boxes that Oregonians want.”

In the face of climate change and increasing energy demands, he added, doing nothing doesn’t seem like an option.

“There is no technology that has zero impacts,” Robertson said. “Everything, every single thing we do, has impact. And I think it’s a question of, would you rather do this or that, because there isn’t any silver bullet that will just solve all the challenges.”

Mann acknowledged the need to find solutions to climate change. At heart, she said, fishermen are environmentalists with a vested interest in maintaining healthy oceans. But as leaders work toward those solutions, she wants fishermen to have a seat at the table.

On the coast, she said, the health of ecosystems, fishing livelihoods and communities are all interconnected.

“You can’t throw a rock without hitting somebody that has something to do with fishing, right down to every Little League team that’s sponsored by a fishing boat,” Mann said. “It is part of the fabric of being a coastal Oregonian.”