Fishermen Concerned with Navigating Offshore Wind Farms

NEW BEDFORD — East Coast fishermen are turning a wary eye toward an emerging upstart: the offshore wind industry.

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, fishermen say they dread navigating hundreds of turbines to get to their historic fishing grounds if three large scale wind farms are developed off the mainland.

Scallopers from Maine to North Carolina are also suing the federal government to halt a nearly 200-turbine wind farm proposed off New York's Long Island.

And commercial fishermen in Maryland's Ocean City and North Carolina's Outer Banks are voicing similar concerns about losing access to critical fishing grounds.

Matthew Morrissey is a vice president at Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company operating the nation's only existing offshore wind farm. He says the two industries can coexist and that Deepwater's Block Island project shows how.