Collecting data to understand interactions between wildlife and offshore wind energy

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In the summer of 2023, a maritime research vessel called the Song of the whale spent many mornings off the coast of Martha's Vineyard keeping an eye (and ear, or hydrophone) on fin whales. Each time they spotted a group of whales, the researchers on board the boat began preparing their specialized drones to either drop a tag – which sticks harmlessly to a whale's back via suction cups – or to collect material coming out a whale's blowhole is exhaled. The drones also took photos to measure the size of the whales.

The aim of the exercise was to gather as much information as possible about the behavior of the fin whales around nearby offshore wind energy sites that were currently in the construction phase of securing the foundations of offshore wind turbines to the seabed. .

Doug Nowacek, a marine conservation technologist at Duke University, serves as principal investigator (PI) of the Wildlife and Offshore Wind (WOW) project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). He and his colleagues spent much of 2023 – the second year of the five-year project – labeling the project's “key species” to better understand their behavior around offshore wind projects under construction. The aim of this project is to ensure that offshore wind developments are compatible with local wildlife.

“The tags themselves are a minor engineering marvel,” says Nowacek. “They are equipped with accelerometers that can tell us about the whale's movement, pressure sensors that tell us how deep they go, and, perhaps most importantly, acoustic sensors so we can measure the loudness of the construction noise.”

The multidisciplinary WOW team includes researchers from universities, national laboratories, consultancies and nonprofit organizations working together to understand how advancing offshore wind energy could impact marine life. The project aims to determine how the species in question respond to the noise of development, whether (and how) they change their habitat use as a result, and what the risks are for collisions between marine life and wind energy infrastructure such as offshore wind turbines. platforms.

“We are here to understand all interactions and potential impacts – positive or negative – of this industrial process on wildlife,” Nowacek said.

Nowacek points out that BOEM already imposes substantial restrictions on the noise a construction project can make and requires abatement measures at all times; crews must also stop work if whales are spotted nearby. Construction work is prohibited at night because whales are more difficult to spot. Construction of Vineyard Wind I and Empire Wind I, two large wind farms under construction off the coast of Massachusetts and the coast of New York, is expected to be completed in the summer of 2024.

This project is also part of the U.S. Department of Energy's larger effort to… sustainability of US offshore wind farms.

Laying the foundation

During the first year of WOW, the team conducted assessments that would help shape their fieldwork in subsequent years. For example, partners from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland conducted a survey and research gap analysis on the species of interest and on offshore wind energy and other offshore industrial processes, which helped them identify exactly how to focus their research. .

At the same time, team members from Duke University's Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, led by WOW's co-PI Patrick Halpin, produced density maps of all the species the project wanted to study so the team could figure out where to focus their research. .

At the beginning of the second year the field teams got to work. Nowacek's crew focused their efforts on monitoring whale behavior. They chose to focus on fin whales, which are relatively poorly studied, are abundant in the area in summer, and are protected under the Endangered Species Act. While the North Atlantic right whale, which has been on the endangered species list since 1970, are also of concern in this part of the Atlantic, they spend their summer much further north – an important factor in determining the construction schedule that should be avoided if whales are in the area.

In addition to the tags that are attached to a whale via suction cups – and which last a few days at most – many fin whales have also had satellite transmitters attached to them. These tags can display location and some dive data for several months. Together, the two types of tags can provide a good amount of information about the whale's behavior, according to Nowacek.

“Tagging whales is hard and slow work, so it takes a lot of effort to collect those samples,” Nowacek says. Ultimately, the team got a large enough sample to gain insight into the fin whales' behavior. This behavior was previously not well understood, but is essential for understanding the impact the structure could have. “If you don't know how often they vocalize, you have no idea if the construction is affecting their acoustic habits,” Nowacek says.

Keep an eye on things

Close to Nowacek's team's whaling activities, another WOW team conducted research in the summer of 2023 on Muskeget Island, just west of Nantucket. The site was chosen because a colony of great black-backed gulls and herring gulls spent their spring breeding season on the island. , and the team was able to attach tags to a sample of seagulls before the seagulls left for the summer.

The tags, which resemble small harnesses or backpacks, “communicate GPS data to cell phone towers, have a small solar panel to maintain their charge and give us a fairly high-resolution photo of where the bird is,” Lesley Thorne said. associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York and a co-PI of WOW who runs some of the bird tagging operations. “The tags also estimate how high birds fly above the ground, which is of great importance for wind farm studies due to the height of the turbines. That is very important if we want to understand the risk of collisions.”

Thorne's team – along with other WOW team members who focus on bird research – have increased their capacity to tag these widespread birds to determine any changes in the way they use the wind energy areas along the East Coast. WOW researchers will also record the flight paths of the eastern red bat using acoustic recorders attached to offshore platforms and conduct aerial surveys (via aircraft) of hawksbill and leatherback sea turtles.

While current research efforts are focused on monitoring animal behavior during the construction of offshore wind energy projects, in the coming years researchers will also be able to see how marine species respond when the turbines are spinning.

Nowacek says he is confident that by the end of the project the team will have some strong insights into the relationship between offshore wind energy development and the species of interest. The resulting dataset will be widely available to help guide offshore wind developments around the world.

Thanks to Wind Energy Technologies Office, U.S. Department of Energy.