NEWPORT, R.I. — A panel about the impact of offshore wind development on fisheries and ocean ecosystems drew a crowd to City Hall on Thursday night and mustered discussion that at times turned contentious.

About 50 people attended the event, hosted by Newport’s Energy and Environment Commission and moderated by commission vice chair Emily Conklin.

Panelists included local marine scientists and stakeholders who have participated in discussions about offshore wind development. They talked about how climate change impacts Rhode Island’s waters and how turbines built to offset greenhouse gas emissions and to help mitigate the climate crisis could also potentially affect fish.

Frederick Mattera, executive director of Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island and a longtime commercial fisherman, said he’s seen a “tremendous shift” in Narragansett Bay as climate change has increased ocean temperatures.

Fishers once caught loads of winter flounder and other ground-dwelling fish by the ton, but those cold-water-loving species have disappeared, he said.

Jeremy Collie, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island whose research involves one of the longest ongoing records of fish populations in the world, seconded Mattera’s observations.

He added that when certain fish come into the bay — their seasonality — is changing as the climate changes as well.

Those changes have already led to a lot of shifts in how fishers work, according to Mattera.

“My fear is, 10, 20, 30 years ago, I sat at the dock ready to go fishing tonight, and I had a half a dozen options of what to go fish for,” he said. “Now … I can go squid fishing because the others don’t exist.”

With all the change the industry has already seen, the possibility of building offshore wind farms could also affect fishing and that worries him, Mattera said.

“This is a big topic, and there is a lot of uncertainty,” one of the panelists, Andrew Lipsky, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Offshore Wind Ecology Branch, said during the Aug. 8 discussion.

Lipsky said NOAA created a “large document” called Fisheries and Offshore Wind Interactions: Synthesis of Science, which outlines what science does and doesn’t know about how offshore wind will impact fisheries.

For example, electromagnetic fields from turbine cables, “that’s one potential effect,” he said. The life cycle of the farms, in development, operation, and decommissioning, could also have different impacts on the environment.

“These interactions are not always negative, they could be positive as well,” Lipsky said. For example, the structures built on the farms could become habitat for some organisms.

David Bethoney, executive director of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation, said monitoring what happens before, during, and after the development of these wind projects, with the participation of fishers, is key.

“What that helps with is transparency,” Bethoney said. “So, now it’s not just a wind farm company hiring some private company that’s only open to them to do the research. There’s a community.”

Bethoney said the foundation has been successful in implementing some programing like that and entering into data-sharing agreements.

When the discussion opened up to questions from the audience, some attendees expressed concern about the recent failure of a Vineyard Wind turbine blade off the coast of Nantucket, which some people are worried is beginning to wash ashore in Rhode Island.

Others cited concerns over how whales may be impacted by offshore wind, although no whale deaths have been attributed to an existing wind farm, according to NOAA.

Occasionally, the discussion grew tense. One woman in the audience questioned how reliable some of the panelists’ science may be when their organizations take donations from offshore wind companies, which got pushback from members of the crowd.

“These guys are experts,” said Mattera, defending the scientists on the panel while also agreeing with the audience members’ concerns about how whales could be impacted by development. “These are experts, and you should listen to them.”

“There’s the whole independent, peer-review process that good science goes through,” Lipsky said. Peer-reviewed articles and papers are scrutinized and edited by other scientists, who are not paid for this work, before they are published. “It makes it through that process regardless of who paid for it.”

He added that science journals also require that authors disclose conflicts of interest.

“It’s blood money,” the audience member yelled after being cajoled by the audience to step off the podium and give others time to speak. She left the discussion before its conclusion.

Another young audience member asked the panelists how offshore wind, which will help reduce carbon emissions, and fishing could coexist.

“You’ve heard me say a lot of negative things about offshore wind, and I will continue to, but I have kids and grandkids,” said Mattera, acknowledging that he worries about their future and knows something needs to be done. “I don’t want to do it at the expense of an industry.”

“Obviously, there are concerns, but one has to realize that there’s no form of energy production that’s without impact, and those impacts have to be mitigated,” Collie said. “So, the solution really is to use less energy overall.

“Wind is definitely part of the way,” he added.