As human populations and per capita demands continue to grow, industries are increasingly moving into offshore ocean spaces. The U.S. has outlined goals to accelerate the development of healthy and sustainable energy and food industries in ocean spaces. Although they can appear vast and unexploited, these areas are often busy with fishing, shipping and other activities, creating conflicts to additional uses or privatization. Despite continued enthusiasm and ever growing need for these industries, expansion into ocean spaces has proven difficult due to public opposition, conflicts with existing ocean uses, and high costs of working offshore.
Meanwhile, research and development into the co-location of aquaculture and offshore energy production is moving forward in some of the top ocean use countries in Europe and Asia, for example, to increase efficiencies in ocean space use and improve public opinions about additional marine industries.
We investigated the existing state of knowledge on the co-location of offshore wind and aquaculture from a multi-disciplinary perspective to understand challenges and opportunities. Given the novelty of this approach, we also reached out to early movers to understand the motivations, impacts, and experiences of different industry players, governing agencies, and third party interests. We distill these lessons down and apply them to the U.S. context to assess the potential for co-location in the U.S. EEZ. To address the diversity of environmental and social conditions throughout the US waters, we conduct assessments of each region to discuss the opportunities and challenges to co-location in each.