COMMENT: Offshore wind, the need for monitoring
Shetland Times
By Sheila Keith
Statistics show how important fishing is to Shetland and therefore anything that could do our family-owned fishing fleet harm should make us all sit up and take notice.
Today we are on the eve of a new industrial development – offshore wind – and the people of Shetland need to be reassured that this unprecedented expansion will not bring potential harm to the marine environment and our well-established fishing industry.
We all can agree that renewable energy is necessary, but it should not progress at any cost. It is a fact that turbines the height of one hundred storey buildings will soon tower over productive fishing grounds, twice the size of Edinburgh, to the east of Shetland.
Roll back almost 50 years ago to July 1974 when similar fears brought the oil industry (BP) and the council (Zetland County Council) together to set up the Sullom Voe Environmental Advisory Group (SVEAG) to provide environmental advice to the council and the industry.
Membership included representatives from ZCC, oil industry and national environmental organisations, as well as independent scientists. Major tasks for SVEAG were to identify environmental consequences associated with the construction of the oil terminal and to advise on ways of minimising adverse effects.
Lessons from 1974 should be learnt and a similar body to SVEAG, subsequently the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group (SOTEAG), should be established to advise on the gathering of a suite of baseline ecological monitoring.
It should move on to design and manage a series of extensive environmental monitoring programmes so that both chronic and acute changes in the marine environment are detected.
Shetland has a long history of doing things its own way. There is a unique opportunity to work along with offshore windfarm developers to examine and advise on the environmental implications of wind turbines and their associated infrastructure to provide transparency for our community and those who depend on healthy seas for their livelihoods.
Why is it then that we feel people would rather trust windfarm developers to do the minimum requirements than challenge them to take the same steps of the pre-oil era?
The time is now for the people to speak up and support the fishermen’s efforts to create a competent monitoring regime for offshore windfarm developers in the waters where our fishing boats have fished for generations. Baseline data must be gathered now.
We should all have an interest in finding out in real time the impacts of offshore wind rather than looking back in hindsight and wondering what went wrong. After all, if we look after fishing it will be here long after wind turbines have been decommissioned and the world has moved on to the next form of energy production.
- Sheila Keith is an executive officer for Shetland Fishermen’s Association.
