Offshore Wind—a New Way of Whaling

A recent National Academies study can go in the “we don’t know what will happen, but it could be awful” file.

Around 1690 when Nantucket Island’s English settlers first ventured out in pursuit of the right whale, they didn’t have to go very far.

As author Nathaniel Philbrick describes, “Every autumn, hundreds of right whales converged to the south of the island and remained until the early spring. Right whales—so named because they were “the right whale to kill”—grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths.”

It only took around 70 years for the local whale population to be “virtually exterminated” by the island’s inhabitants, Philbrick recounted. By then, of course, they had created a fleet of vessels capable of hunting and processing whales at great distances from home.

But now, it seems the right whales have returned to the island, in and around a large area of often treacherous waters called the Nantucket Shoals.

As reported by NOAA Fisheries, “Right whales have typically appeared in Cape Cod Bay during spring, but in recent years have been arriving sooner and staying longer. Right whale use of areas south and west of Nantucket Shoals has been documented in just the last 10 years. In recent years, the right whales appear to be staying in these waters in greater numbers and for longer periods than in the past.”

The North Atlantic right whale may be hanging around longer in Southern New England waters once again, but in far fewer numbers than originally, as the entire species is on the verge of being wiped out.  Official population totals go between 340 and 360, with only 70 known reproductively active females.

Although observers are thrilled to see these enormous creatures breach, feed, and socialize with each other, the timing of their return to Nantucket and the longer sojourns they’ve chosen to spend in and around its waters couldn’t have been worse.

The red area was split into two leases, 0561 and 0534, now known as New England Wind 1 & 2. Graphic: National Academies.

The bottom of the food chain

Bunched together off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, bordering on the Nantucket shoals, are ten leases granted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to construct a planned total of 924 giant offshore wind turbines.

Three of these lease areas are currently under construction (including Vineyard Wind, which was temporarily halted due to the disintegration of one of its massive turbine blades), six are still in the permitting process, and one, South Fork Wind (with the least number of turbines at 12) has already been completed.

Amid all this construction, planning, and even operation, comes a BOEM-sponsored study put out by the National Academies and released in October 2023 that examines what alterations these artificial structures may make on the marine ecology of the area.

Now, the contributors to this report, Potential Hydrodynamic Impacts of Offshore Wind Energy on Nantucket Shoals Regional Ecology: An Evaluation from Wind to Whales, are among the who’s who in science and marine biology from leading research facilities around the county, including Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Duke University, and Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

What was found in this “consensus study report” should have provided a jolt of reality to those who still believe that offshore wind is somehow environmentally friendly and that the “experts” know exactly what its effects will be.

For example: When turbine blades spin, extracting energy from the wind, it reduces the wind speed behind them (called the wind wake effect), while the turbine structures themselves make the water more turbulent. Those reactions cause dynamic changes “that could affect ocean currents, surface wind speeds, and other factors that influence hydrodynamics – the structure and movement of the water around the turbines,” the researchers said. Those disturbances can extend way beyond the immediate area of the turbines as well.

The study acknowledged that one of the side effects of these altered “waves, tides, and currents” may be a disturbance of zooplankton, the tiny animals that the giant right whales feed on. Changes to zooplankton, including where they are located, “could affect whale feeding or cause the whales to change foraging habitats.

“When considering arrays of turbines…these effects become more complex,” the researchers stated and can have implications for both local and regional water circulation.

The most important “knowledge gaps,” according to the authors, include almost everything about “hydrodynamics around wind energy turbines.” In other words, we simply have no idea what the outcome of this experiment will be.

“Large turbines of the size planned for the Nantucket Shoals region have not been built yet in U.S. waters,” they stated.  It’s not even known what species of zooplankton congregate in the area, or where they come from. (Not mentioned in the study are the other wind areas being constructed down the Atlantic seaboard that will also obstruct right whale migration routes.)

In an interview with The Conversation, a publication put out by the University of South Carolina, a group of four experts in the field who served on the study committee for the report, were asked if the findings called for delaying offshore wind projects until these questions are answered. They replied, “No, and we were not asked to provide recommendations for how the wind industry should proceed with construction.”

This is not the first study to examine how offshore wind areas can produce changes in the marine ecosystem. In 2022 researchers out of Germany modeled the wind wake effect on turbines in the North Sea and concluded that large-scale wind energy areas may change “the generation of nutrients at the base of the marine food chain.”

The lights of Nantucket

Screenshot Nantucket Current. Photo: Sam Hill

Meanwhile, back on Nantucket Island, which suffered the first wave of fiberglass and other debris from the humungous turbine blade that fell apart on July 13, there’s another ongoing form of pollution.

As reported by the Nantucket Current, red blinking lights atop the 24 installed turbines in the partially constructed project have been on continuously, despite Vineyard Wind’s guarantee that they would remain off unless an aircraft were in the area.

Part of the “Good Neighbor Agreement” signed four years ago with the town of Nantucket, was an assurance that the turbine lights would only be activated as needed. That would be accomplished by setting up an aircraft detection lighting system (ADLS), which it was agreed would be installed before any turbines began spinning. When that didn’t happen, activation of the ADLS system was promised by Memorial Day weekend, which obviously wasn’t the case, either.

While the remaining right whales congregating off Nantucket may no longer face the threat of being exterminated for their oil, that doesn’t mean they won’t once again end up being sacrificed in the name of providing “power” to our homes. Perhaps those blinking red lights should serve as an ominous warning.