In these highly anthropized environments, with areas that are fiercely contested by numerous users, traditional or new fisheries and aquaculture have difficulty in maintaining themselves and, a fortiori, in prospering.
However, their maintenance and development are essential to ensure the well-being and nutrition of human populations. Thanks to their supply of local, fresh and highly diversified products, these activities make it possible to maintain processing and gastronomic practices that ensure the particularity of our coastal and marine ‘terroirs’, strongly emphasising the Nature-Culture link within the socio-ecosystems of the sea and the littorals. The maintenance and development of these enterprises are indicators of the quality of an aquatic environment that is increasingly under pressure from urban, tourist and industrial activities, which strongly affect transitional waters and coastal zones, important nursery areas for many marine species.
Climate change, as currently observed, requires a much more decarbonised production of energy that shifts towards an increase in the production of wind energy in offshore waters or near the coast. For the last twenty years, in Northern Europe, offshore wind farms have been developed near coastal areas (Denmark, with the first wind farm installed in 2002; Great Britain, with the largest number of wind turbines in Europe). These farms are often located in areas that are already intensively used: maritime transport, dredging, material extraction, tourism, fishing, shellfish farming, ….. It is important to know how this cohabitation between offshore wind development and traditional fishing and aquaculture activities, which are important for the development of local communities, will be achieved without directly or indirectly affecting the maintenance of these primary production activities.
The sustainability of fishing and aquaculture activities is already strongly affected by the artificialisation of these coastal areas and in many interface zones. The development of offshore wind power must take this situation into account by not further penalising the development of these coastal activities and be part of a dynamic that professional fishing defines as a responsible fishing and aquaculture activity including three objectives: to provide the greatest number of people with quality seafood products; to ensure environmental monitoring and to contribute to the management of resources and ecosystems within a framework that brings together all expert knowledge (academic and traditional).