A framework to evaluate dynamic social and ecological interactions between offshore wind energy development and commercial fisheries in a changing climate: A US West Coast perspective

Offshore wind energy (OWE) planning is occurring alongside efforts to understand the potential effects of long-term environmental variability and climate change on social-ecological systems. To minimize potential conflicts between current and new ocean-use sectors, there is a need to identify tradeoffs between OWE development and other ocean users under dynamic environmental conditions. Here, we present a framework for evaluating the risk of groundfish fisheries being displaced from traditional fishing grounds by the designation of proposed OWE areas (OWEAs) and how risk may be affected by climate change impacts on targeted species. Specifically, we use fishery-dependent catch data from three groundfish fisheries to derive annual fishing “footprints” for port groups along the U.S. West Coast (1994–2020). We calculate the historical risk of these fleets being displaced from fishing grounds that have been proposed as sites for OWE development using an exposure-vulnerability framework. Risk varies across fishing fleets, but generally corresponds to a fleet’s target species and distance to proposed OWEAs. We then use existing climate-driven projections to map the spatial distribution of targeted species biomass for each of the three fisheries from 2020 to 2100. In some cases, future target species biomass indices have higher predicted values inside proposed OWEAs compared to outside OWEAs, indicating that incorporating climate change impacts may increase the perceived risk of displacement for these fleets. These results indicate that tradeoffs between commercial fishing and OWE development will not be fully understood unless the effects of climate change are incorporated into marine spatial planning and efforts to develop appropriately scaled mitigation measures.