November 4, 2022 — As America’s offshore wind industry gets ready to launch new clean energy projects off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, conservationists and federal scientists have communicated worries over how the installations could harm the endangered North Atlantic right whale, now numbering an estimated 340.
In light of these potential threats, a federal scientist proposed a “conservation buffer” zone — or area of no wind turbines — of about 10 nautical miles adjacent to the Nantucket shoals and seemingly overlapping with offshore wind development planned in southern New England.
Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and the letter’s signatory, proposed the buffer zone in a letter this spring to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) — the lead regulator for offshore wind development. According to maps of the wind lease areas, the proposed 20-kilometer buffer beginning at an area called the “30-meter isobath” in the shoals appears to overlap with an eastern portion of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island wind energy area.