Survival of Fisheries: Thousands of Wind Turbines to Be Installed off the Coast of Changhua, Forcing Fishing Boats to Retreat and Making Fishermen's Transition Urgent

Offshore wind power and fisheries have clashed repeatedly, with controversies arising frequently. Changhua, located at the midpoint of the west coast, is currently the county and city with the largest offshore wind farm area, and in the future more than a thousand wind turbines will be planted across its waters. Dense wind turbines plus shipping lanes will cut the waters off Changhua into fragments, leaving almost no intact sea area for fishermen to work in. Coastal fishermen will be unable to continue fishing. Where should they go?

The severe challenges facing Changhua's fishermen may be a microcosm of Taiwan's western coastal and offshore fisheries. Compensation from wind power for fisheries is only a one-time economic remedial measure, and fishermen's subsequent livelihoods remain unresolved. After years of protests and conflict, the Changhua District Fishermen's Association proposed a "reconciliation and coexistence" plan in 2019, hoping that wind power developers would provide funding and that industry, government, and academia would establish a platform to promote "offshore ranching," transforming capture fisheries into offshore aquaculture and seeking the possibility of coexistence between fisheries and wind turbines.

Chen Chu-tsan, director-general of the Changhua District Fishermen's Association, admitted frankly, "This plan carries enormous pressure and enormous risk, but for the sustainability of Changhua's fisheries and the livelihoods of fishermen, we must give it a try. Otherwise, Changhua's fisheries will face a matter of survival or destruction." (To read the following article, please click here)

The waters off Changhua will be packed with wind turbines as seven developers enter the battlefield

The promotion of domestic offshore wind power is carried out in three stages: demonstration incentives, potential sites, and block development. According to the "Directions for Applications for Planned Offshore Wind Power Sites" announced in July 2015, among the 36 potential sites planned in the second stage, 21 are located in the waters off Changhua. The initial plan covered 2,500 sq km of sea area, accounting for more than half of the nation's potential sites.

Even in 2017, when the Maritime and Port Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications coordinated with the Bureau of Energy on the grounds of "navigation safety" to remove potential sites No. 20 to 25 in the north-south shipping lanes, nearly 2,000 sq km of sea area off Changhua was still designated for wind farms.

Changhua County's land area is only 1,174 sq km, while the offshore wind farm area is nearly twice the size of Changhua, equivalent to 7 Taipei Cities and 100 times the size of Sun Moon Lake, the nation's largest natural lake. As a contested strategic location, the waters off Changhua are covered by 7 developers across two stages of development, and their importance is self-evident.

If the north-south shipping lanes designated by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the direct cross-strait shipping lane on both sides of Taichung Port, and the Formosa Plastics Sixth Naphtha Cracker Complex shipping lane on the south side are also included (see attached map), the waters off Changhua have already been almost completely carved up by wind farms and shipping lanes, leaving fishermen with only a narrow strip of about 9 to 10 km along the coast for fishing.

FishFisheries expert: The planning of potential sites gave no consideration to fisheries at all, and the entire offshore area was ceded to wind power developers

So how exactly were the wind farm sites off Changhua planned? Ou Ching-hsien, a professor in the Department of Environmental Biology and Fisheries Science at National Taiwan Ocean University who participated in wind power development as a fisheries expert, revealed that at the beginning of planning, fisheries and fishermen were not considered at all, and even the Fisheries Agency was only informed after site selection planning had begun.

"At the beginning, the Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs asked the Industrial Technology Research Institute to plan wind farms across Taiwan, and only then did the Fisheries Agency find out. ITRI's planning considered only technical aspects, excluding areas according to water depth, currents, wind farms, terrain, and relevant regulations, but as for matters related to fisheries, it did not ask local fishermen or fishermen's associations at all, and it was announced just like that," he said.

Looking through the environmental impact assessment documents, the important basis for the Bureau of Energy's designation of potential sites in the second stage was the exclusion method, excluding all areas prohibited or restricted under relevant regulations, such as conservation reef zones, port areas and artificial fish reefs, artillery firing zones, wetlands, and important habitats of the white dolphin. After excluding these sensitive locations, almost all of the sea area extending outward off Changhua was allocated to wind power developers.

Ou Ching-hsien believes that Changhua is an extreme case in the wind power development process: almost the entire offshore area available for operations has been filled with wind turbines from wind farms, traditional fishing grounds have been fragmented to a very high degree, and fishermen's living space has been compressed to the limit.

One wind turbine per sq km, Changhua fishing