Could new research that shows fish and crabs thrive around offshore wind turbines be a game changer for an industry that’s (ironically) struggling with its eco-image?
The Swedish scientist who conducted the research, Dan Wilhelmsson, won’t go that far, but his research is encouraging to developers, who, he says, have already started citing the studies of the “artificial reefs.”
In an email to GER, Wilhelmsson writes that certain species’ use of turbine foundations as an artificial reef habitat could open up “’a demographic bottleneck” for bottom dwelling species that have limited habitat.
By how much?
Wilhelmsson writes that densities of adult, bottom-dwelling fish were twice as high on the wind turbine foundations and 1 to 5 meters away from the foundations compared with areas 20 meters away and reference areas up to 1 km away.
Including juvenile fish, the densities were 100 times higher on the turbines then in reference areas.
He found similar results for wave energy foundations.
His research, which was based in the Kalmar Strait of the Baltic Sea off of Southeastern Sweden – among other areas – comes as large offshore wind farms such as Cape Wind’s 420-megawatt project in Nantucket Sound have come under increasing attack.
Critics of the Cape Wind project have many issues with the project, including a claim that the turbines will hurt commercial fisheries.
Wilhelmsson’s research does not directly address the issues of Cape Wind, but he writes that wind platforms could serve as a tool for fisheries management, particularly if trawling is forbidden in the area.
He writes,
“The combination of ‘no-take zones’ and artificial reefs is a fisheries management/conservation tool in other regions and parallels to wind/wave farms can definitely be drawn.”
Several species, including crabs and blue mussels, thrive around the foundations because “hard surfaces are often hard currency in the ocean and these foundations can function as artificial reefs,” Wilhelmsson writes in his dissertation for Stockholm University.
The research is based on six studies that were published in journals between 2006 and 2009, so these conclusions have some basis, Wilhelmsson writes.
He cautions that some of the fish and crabs living on the foundations would be predators to other species on the surrounding seabed so the “reef effects may not always be wanted.”
Still, expect to see the idea that wind turbines could be good for fisheries gain currency amongst green energy developers.
Photo: Arnstein Bjone/Wikimedia Commons