LePage Admin's choice: exploit the Gulf of Maine for ocean wind power for Boston? Or for lobsters, scallops & haddock for Maine?

As far as the Gulf of Maine goes, Governor Paul LePage must begin by either
(1) supporting the rough and tumble economy of Maine's existing small ocean businesses - lobstering and other commercial & recreational fisheries offshore and onshore of Maine, and their supporting landbased economic partners. Or

(2)
support oncoming big absentee corporations
- utility companies, investmentbanks and more - brought to Maine by the new federal ocean windpower agency BOEMRE, that are ready to grab as much public marine wildlands off Maine as they can. Fishers be da*med! This would be abandoning his constituents, an unlikely event, one hopes.

Because what's at stake for Maine in Governor LePage's decision about ocean windpower could be the the very survival of Maine lobstering itself. Unless Lepage does not bow to the Obama Administration's powerful federal pressure on Maine seeking to hurry a quick and dirty heavily subsidized offshore industrial windrush before anyone catches on, Maine fishermen could be in for quite an unpleasant surprise.


What's the issue?

Larval lobsters, like the young of much other sea life, are planktonic for a month or more after hatching - in early summer in the lobsters' case. Although they swim, their movement is largely that of the currents in which they become entrained. As demonstrated in the above University of Maine animation, Maine lobster larvae hatching from Canadian and Downeast broodstock travel down the Eastern Maine Coastal Current to Penobscot Bay waters, where the world's top American Lobster fishery unsurprisingly occurs. Scallops and many finfish also spend their larval time of life traveling by ocean current from hatching place to settlement area.


But in this illustration of summer surface currents - based on the state's official draft location map of proposed Gulf of Maine ocean windpow... one proposed windpower area is directly athwart the Eastern Maine Coastal Current (EMCC) just before it reaches Penobscot Bay.


According to researchers from Norway - a nation with more than a decade of experience - ocean windmills by their very nature, ocean windfarms force millions of gallons of waters to flow vertically from the seafloor to the surface.


"A wind speed of 5–10 m/s may generate upwelling/downwelling velocities exceeding 1 m/day." says Goran Brostrom, ocean researcher for the Norwegian Meteorological Institute,


Over time this vertical water movement can result in a colder denser water column called an "upwelling" - a vertical current - forming below and around the ocean windfarm's footprint. When a warmer surface water current runs into such an upwelling, the current may be partly dispersed, partly diverted around the upwelling. Planktonic larvae riding that current may be misplaced or delayed.


Depending on the size of ocean wind project set up there, more lobster larvae could be diverted south into the outer Gulf of Maine, than continue west into SW Penobscot Bay's presently high performing rich lobster grounds.


Two others ocean windpower planning areas are within the Western Maine Coastal Current, which travels from west Penobscot Bay to Massachusetts Bay along the Northern New England coast - one off Casco Bay and one between upper Jeffreys Ledge and the mainland. (Actual sites have more irregular shapes than shown. see map below). Note the red disclaimers- see how worried the Baldacci administration is about fishermen and others seeing them.
Meanwhile the University of Maine, Cianbro BIW,etc have almost got their 40 million dollar federal
money in hand. There's no reason to get in their way, beyond ensuring they don't muckle up ocean currents that move lobster larv..., or hinder wildlife migration routes.migration routes




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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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