WELLFLEET — Two years after its first public announcement in August 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) plans to hold public auctions for eight offshore wind energy leasing areas in the Gulf of Maine this October.

During the public comment period ahead of the auction, BOEM received more than 100 comments, many of which mentioned the potential effects of floating wind turbines on the marine environment, seafood stocks, and commercial fishermen’s livelihoods.

One concern is the large power cables that will transfer electricity from the offshore wind turbines to the mainland. The power flowing through these cables generates electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, that some worry could disrupt the movement of lobsters across the seafloor or even affect their reproductive health.

Scientists who spoke with the Independent said that EMFs from offshore wind farms are not a cause for panic but do merit further investigation.

“Things aren’t just going to turn upside-down dead,” said Andrew Gill, a lead scientist at the U.K.-based Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science who has published research on the effects of undersea power cables on lobsters.

It’s important to address the concerns of fishermen with further studies, Gill added. “We need to identify what the concerns are and have the appropriately designed studies to help address them.”

What Are EMFs?

Electromagnetic fields are invisible areas of energy that have both electric and magnetic properties. The spinning of the Earth’s iron core generates an EMF that is much larger than the planet itself, while the movement of electrons through a copper wire, or a magnet through a copper coil, also generate EMFs around them.

While humans cannot directly sense EMFs, many other organisms can — including hammerhead sharks, which hunt by following the electric fields generated by their prey species, and homing pigeons, which use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate.

Lobsters appear also to sense electromagnetic fields. A 2003 study by two biologists from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that spiny lobsters will travel toward a coil that replicates the magnetic field near their home territories, suggesting they use magnetic fields to navigate like homing pigeons do. Research like this has led some to argue that the EMFs from turbine cables, which carry enormous amounts of electricity, will disrupt lobsters’ movements or prevent their migration altogether.

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Mass. Lobstermen’s Association, said that lobster fishermen are “absolutely” concerned about how EMFs will affect lobsters.

“I’m really afraid that the electrical current is going to disturb lobsters from coming into the bay,” said Mike Rego, a Provincetown-based lobster fisherman. “Every fisherman I talk to feels the same way.”

Rego said he had asked BOEM officials at a meeting this summer about the effects of EMFs from undersea cables and “they had no answer.”

Josiah Mayo, another Provincetown-based lobster fisherman, said that many fishermen he knows distrust experts, and he believes they have some fair cause.

“We’ve been led astray and misinformed by experts over and over again,” Mayo said, noting in particular the loose regulation of groundfishing in the 1970s that was supported by experts at the time. “That crashed the entire groundfishery in New England,” Mayo said.

Nonetheless, Mayo said, “There’s no data I’ve seen that shows there’s a big deal” when it comes to lobsters and undersea cables. He noted that there are already large cables in other places, including those that connect Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard to Cape Cod, and they haven’t seemed to reduce lobster numbers.

Mayo added that the research he has seen to date indicates that climate change and bycatch from trawlers are the most pressing threats to the lobster fishery.

EMFs and Migration

The most prominent study so far to address the effect of EMFs on lobster migration was published in 2018 and led by University of Rhode Island oceanographer Zoë Hutchison. The study placed one group of lobsters in an enclosure directly next to the Cross-Sound Cable, a massive undersea cable between Long Island and Connecticut, and another set of lobsters in an enclosure far from it. It then measured the lobsters’ movements to see whether they might avoid the cable.

The researchers found that there were slight changes in the lobsters’ behavior, but they were extremely subtle and did not suggest that the electromagnetic field from the cable was a barrier to lobster migration. “There was a response by lobsters, but it was not extreme,” said Gill, who was an author on that study.

“At that level of cable, and that level of power, and the context of the organisms there, is it a barrier? No,” said Gill.

Nonetheless, Gill stressed that research on the Cross-Sound Cable does not necessarily apply to all cables. “It has been extended as ‘there’s never going to be a barrier,’ ” said Gill. “That’s not true, because cables are getting bigger.”

Another concern, Gill said, would be the number of cables necessary for an offshore wind project, as this would lead to a greater likelihood of lobsters encountering EMFs. The effects of a network of undersea cables on lobsters remain poorly understood, he said.

Several organizations are now conducting lobster surveys around future turbine sites in New England, including a UMass Dartmouth-led study south of Martha’s Vineyard, a Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation-led study south of Rhode Island, and a Rhode Island Dept. of Environmental Management-led study in Narragansett Bay.

These surveys will count lobsters before, during, and after the installation of wind turbines using “ventless” traps that capture lobsters of all ages.

According to Corinne Truesdale, a marine biologist at the Rhode Island Dept. of Environmental Management, her department’s survey will continue for seven years, monitoring not just lobster numbers but also the age and sex of the population, the condition of their shells, and how many eggs females carry.

Truesdale said that among the fishermen who helped design that study the potential for migration barriers was a major concern. As a result, some lobsters will get unique tags and then be released in hopes they might be recaptured elsewhere.

Truesdale said that fishermen had also helped select the survey sites and the type of traps used. “They were a big part of designing the survey,” she said. “They’re a good way to check the methods that you might come up with as scientists.”

Truesdale’s study is set to conclude in 2031 — around the time actual construction in the Gulf of Maine turbine leasing areas is expected to begin.

EMFs and Mutations

Another study regarding lobsters and EMFs, led by Petra Harsanyi of the St. Abbs Marine Biology Station in Scotland, found that high-intensity fields can cause mutations in developing crustaceans and impair their ability to swim. This study, however, used EMFs that were 10 times stronger than what would be expected around a power cable for an offshore wind farm, and Harsanyi told the Independent that lobsters in the wild would be very unlikely to encounter anything as strong as the fields in her experiment.

Harsanyi’s study put egg-laying lobsters in a tank with high-intensity EMF cables running around it and monitored the young lobsters’ development. She found that the lobsters in the EMF tank laid fewer eggs than those in the control tank, and when those eggs hatched, the young had more birth defects and were more likely to fail swimming tests.

Harsanyi also said that, in nature, larval lobsters float in the upper levels of the water column, much like plankton. In the experiment, the larval lobsters were kept constantly close to the source of the electromagnetic fields.

This can seem like a technicality, but Gill said the danger of EMFs is closely related to their strength.

“If I put a speaker next to your ear and turned it up enough, your ears are going to bleed,” Gill said, but this doesn’t mean that sounds at lower volumes are similarly damaging.

Nonetheless, Harsanyi thinks a connection between EMFs and mutations warrants further scrutiny. Her research team is now running another experiment using EMFs that are more like those around undersea power cables.

For now, Harsanyi said, “Would I stop building wind farms based on our research? I don’t think so.

“We are not against wind farms here,” Harsanyi added. “We’re going to have to move into green energy, but hopefully we can do it in an environmentally responsible way.”