You are invited to attend an informational webinar on a new initiative in the Gulf of Maine! RODA, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), and the University of Rhode Island have partnered on an Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) to address interactions between the environment, fisheries production, and offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and their associated management implications.

As this is the first application of the IEA process in relation to fisheries and offshore wind development, we are holding multiple webinars that will describe how an IEA is conducted and provide examples of the type of information we need. Each webinar will contain the same information, but they are scheduled at different dates and times to accommodate as many attendees as possible. These webinars will be followed up by a series of stakeholder workshops to be held throughout the region. As always, funding is limited so we will do our best to identify locations that maximize our outreach. In these stakeholder workshops, we will ask the fishing industry to expand on information they have already provided through the BOEM public comment periods to help us identify important links between fishing, the environment, and offshore wind development specifically within the Gulf of Maine. Further details on information needs from the fishing industry will be provided during the informational webinars.
These initial webinars are open to the public, so feel free to share with other fishing industry members. We expect state or federal agency staff and developers to also attend as we will need their perspective or knowledge of the technology.

We are asking everyone to register in advance of these webinars so we aren’t caught off-guard if any of these webinars is insanely popular. The same information will be provided at each webinar so there is no need to attend more than one. Times and registration links are provided below:

• April 24, 2023 at 2:00pm EST – Registration Link
• April 26, 2023 at 10:00am EST – Registration Link
• May 2, 2023 at 5:00pm EST – Registration Link

In case none of these date/times works for you, we will post a recording of the presentation given on RODA’s IEA page on our website following the webinars.