Gary Yerman, 75, sat nervously in a noisy ballroom in Virginia Beach, Virginia, counting down the minutes until he could shed his ill-fitting double-breasted suit for a sun shirt and blue jeans. He introduced himself as a fisherman of 50 years to a stranger seated next to him at the banquet table.
“That sounds really hard,” the other man replied.
“Not as hard as it’s going to be to go accept this award and talk to a room full of people,” joked Yerman. Moments later, his name was called, and he walked onto a professionally lit stage to accept a small crystal trophy from the Oceantic Network, a leading trade group for the burgeoning multibillion-dollar U.S. offshore wind industry.
It was an unlikely sight. America’s fishermen have long treated wind developers as their sworn enemies.
The conflict started in the early 2000s, when the first plans for New England’s offshore wind areas were sketched out. In packed to... Read more
