Wind and Fish - Hyannis, MA 41°38.155’N, 070°15.794’W

There are two interesting disputes happening on the Cape.

The first is relatively new, and stems from Nantucket Sound's status as one of the most windy places in the US (which, in addition to its beauty, also explains all the sailboats). It's a proposal to build a windfarm, wind powered electric generating turbines, offshore in Nantucket Sound.

It's an interesting dilemma. Politically, the East Cost tends to be Democrat, and I think people, broadly speaking, have a tendency to support alternative energy, recognising that doing so may come at the expense of pure economics: that is, it's still not cheaper to generate electricity from a windfarm than to burn coal. On the other hand, there's some pretty fancy real-estate around here; Nantucket in particular, and people have paid a lot of loot for those ocean views. So there's some interesting tension between a desire to see alternative energy flourish, and 'not in my backyard'.

I bought some food this morning and the shopkeeper commented that 'they're the most Republican Democrats in the US round here'! I did laugh when the dockmaster was saying he was all for alternative energy, but he couldn't tolerate the noise the turbines would make (these things, if built, will be 15+ miles away).

Personally, having seen the windfarms in Spain, I think slowly turning turbines are quite beautiful.

The other dispute isn't new, it's at least 400 years old, and it relates to fishing. The New England coast is close to the Grand Banks (think 'The Perfect Storm'), historically one of the most abundant fishing grounds in the world. It was for this resource that America came up with the Exclusive Economic Zone, I believe at the time, a new concept in international law. I'm very conscious of the fishing boats here (their leaving in the morning rocks my bed from side to side). There's also many more than I would have expected - strange, I never noticed them from New York City! That's the problem: there's terrible overfishing, and the legislative response is killing an industry. I want to chat with some fisherman about it. For now, it's scallop season and the dredgers head out for 10 day voyages. Henry and I overheard a dredger on the VHF (listening Tom?) saying they had 18,000 lbs of scallop meat on board after 18 days "it's true us fishermen are well moneyed, but we're no good at doing anything good with it".