Shipping Safety Fairways Along the Atlantic Coast

The New England Fishermen's Stewardship Association (NEFSA) supports the Atlantic Fairways initiative but argues that the Draft PEIS/OEIS fails to adequately analyze the specific areas where commercial fishing, shipping, and offshore wind development overlap. They request a 90-day extension of the comment period, additional public meetings, and supplemental analyses to better evaluate the cumulative impacts on fishing communities and port access.

Seafreeze Ltd./Seafreeze Shoreside, representing the commercial fishing industry, supports the proposed Fairways action but argues that it must be expanded to include the protection of historic commercial fishing transit routes. They specifically request that the USCG incorporate offshore wind lease buyback areas into the action and use Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data to identify and protect these critical fishing paths.

The New England Fishermen's Stewardship Association (NEFSA) opposes the proposed Atlantic Coast Shipping Safety Fairways because the Supplemental Regulatory Analysis fails to adequately quantify the economic and operational costs to the commercial fishing industry. They argue that the analysis overemphasizes benefits to commercial shipping while ignoring the cumulative impacts of routing changes and offshore wind development on fishing vessels, ports, and the broader seafood supply chain.