Fisheries, Climate Change, and Offshore Wind Energy Development on US Continental Shelf Regions

ABSTRACT Areas along the US continental shelf that have been designated for extensive offshore wind farm installations over the coming decades overlap with regions that support economically important fisheries. These fisheries are undergoing changes in distribution in response to warming ocean water temperatures. The combination of expanding offshore wind energy infrastructure and changing environmental conditions presents new challenges for these offshore fisheries. The contributions in this special issue consider responses of habitat, biology, and socio‐economic aspects of commercial and recreational fisheries to the coincident stressors of changing oceanographic conditions, climate change, and development of offshore renewable energy. The synthesis of the current state of understanding at the nexus of these interactions provided by these contributions points to areas of research needed to advance co‐existence of fisheries with expanded use of the offshore ocean environment that is undergoing rapid environmental change.