NEW BEDFORD — For Captain Tony Alvernaz, accepting a job doing safety work for Vineyard Wind has provided added income for his family and the families of the people who work for him.

“I’ve been hearing about it, and I’ve been pursuing any and all extra work we can get for these boats,” he said. “These boats are tied up for up to 11 months of the year and that’s not good business, that’s terrible business.”

Alvernaz has been going to sea with his father since he was 15 and he’s now 60. He said his thoughts on offshore wind are mixed.

“It’s scary for us commercial fishermen to be honest with you, but there's some opportunities, and we’ll see,” he said. “Hopefully one hand will wash the other.”

New Bedford fisherman fears losing fishing grounds

Based in New Bedford, Alvernaz said his greatest worry is losing fishing grounds. He is part owner of the Kathryn Marie and manages six boats. Normally his employees will work up to 100 to 110 days, but this year they were potentially looking at working for 70 days to make a living.

“Now they’ll get an extra 45 days at a decent pay, a decent rate,” he said. “You do what you’ve got to do. They’re all young family guys, and I’ve got two kids to put through college.”

Read more: A New Bedford fishing boat needed a new engine. Cost: $175K. And that was just the start.

Fishermen monitoring Vineyard Wind work zone

They are monitoring the work zone for Vineyard Wind as the company proceeds with turbine installation and at the same time are helping get the word out to other fishermen, according to Crista Bank, the fisheries manager at Vineyard Wind.

Bank said the involvement of fishing vessels in the project is really important and that the same opportunities are offered to a single vessel owner, a scallop owner with a couple of boats or vessels that are up to international standards.

“We’re trying to make sure we’re contracting with all different sized vessels and vessel owners,” she said.

What the fishermen are doing with Vineyard Wind

In 2019, Vineyard Wind started working with the first group of fishing vessels to help with fisheries research surveys by contracting with the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) in New Bedford due to its long history of using fishing vessels as research platforms.

“We had a lobster survey, a trawl survey and a drop-camera survey, and all the research takes place on fishing vessels,” she said. “The fishermen are also involved in designing the studies to help put our monitoring plan together.”

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Fishing boats acting as scout vessels

The next step was hiring the fishing vessels to act as scout vessels working ahead of bigger vessels doing survey work to help locate lobster buoys and other fixed gear so the larger vessels towing their gear don’t get tangled up in the fishing gear and equipment. Fishermen were also on the survey vessels to help document any missing gear or damage so Vineyard Wind could cover the cost.

In Nantucket Sound they hired the owner of a 35-foot conch vessel to act as an advanced scout and got other vessels involved. Fishermen were also hired to act as an extra set off eyes around the work area during the start of construction when extra communication was needed to let fishermen and other mariners know what was happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Bank said.

They started construction in mid-March, dropping rocks out in the lease area 14 miles south of the Islands. Banks said it’s an area that’s typically dragger territory where they fish with mobile gear, and the intent is to ensure 24-7 communication with any boats approaching close to the work site.

The crew of four on the Kathryn Marie headed out recently for an eight-day trip after the previous vessel at the work site returned. Bank said they have contracts with a group of four scallop boat owners that are rotating their boats through every 45 days leading up to the end of the year.

Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller was there to send them off. Since 2019, Vineyard Wind said it has spent approximately $5 million hiring local fishing vessels at different stages of the project.

Making notification to the fishing community

Bank said every week they send out notifications – either emails or text alerts by phone – about where offshore vessel activity is taking place and work with the state to send out notifications. They also notify different types of fishing organizations such as the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island.

The notifications don’t reach everyone, however, she said, while acknowledging that outreach can be improved. Since not everyone knows what’s happening, she said it’s invaluable to have fishermen on the water who know the difference between a dragger and a gill netter and a clamboat and know who will be fishing in a particular area and or moving through an area.

“They’re out there for communication to let them know what’s happening and to be an extra set of eyes in the work area to keep everybody safe,” she said.

Acoustic system to monitor migratory species

They have added onto their fishery surveys an acoustic monitoring system out there for highly migratory species.

“We have the contract for the aquarium and they’re subcontracting fishing vessels to help to deploy the receivers and to do some tagging out there, so there are another four or five vessels through the aquarium for that effort,” she said.

She said when you add up the aquarium vessels, the research vessels, SMAST vessels, the scout vessels, the safety vessels and the University of New Hampshire’s fishing vessel that deploys an acoustic receiver for whales, they’re closer to about 45 different vessels.

She said where they get stuck is not having vessels with dynamic positioning that keeps a vessel in one place when carefully picking a piece of equipment up from the bottom or putting it down because fishing vessels typically don’t have that capability.

She said they’re trying to make sure they have a good handle on the capabilities of all the different vessels so they can serve specific purposes.

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Fishermen work with offshore wind developer in challenging times