November 30, 2022 — The following is an excerpt from an article published by the New Bedford Light:
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.
Scientists in a 2022 New England Aquarium-led study found an increasing trend of right whales in the waters off of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket during all seasons (instead of just in the winter and spring) and cited climate change as a possible driver with a warming ocean shifting the whales’ feeding and migration patterns.
NOAA Fisheries submitted a public comment to BOEM for the Mayflower Wind project several months before Hayes’ letter (sent in May of this year) that included a similar proposal. While not explicitly mentioning a conservation buffer zone, it recommended BOEM in its environmental impact statement (EIS) include a project alternative of no turbines in a portion of the lease.
“We recommend BOEM evaluate in the EIS an alternative that limits the portion of the lease where [wind turbine generators] can be installed, which would result in no [wind turbine generators] in the northern portion of the lease area,” said the comment letter. “This alternative would reduce project overlap with some of the highest documented densities of North Atlantic right whale aggregations in the lease area…”
The 800-megawatt Mayflower Wind project is currently under review by BOEM. Asked if the company is planning to establish turbine-free areas in the lease as a potential mitigating measure for the right whales, Daniel Hubbard, director of external affairs and general counsel for Mayflower Wind, said by email that they are reviewing information and that “as the permitting process progresses, as with all material presented, we will take it into consideration.”
Research has found turbines will likely affect tidal currents and the water column in which zooplankton (right whales’ food) are found. Whales require dense collections of zooplankton, and any disruptions to that could have “significant energetic and population consequences,” Hayes wrote, particularly for their winter feeding area.
“It’s like the perfect storm of what could go wrong,” said Erica Fuller, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF).
Fuller said the area in and around the New England waters where wind development is set to take place was poorly surveyed for right whales before the federal government identified it for multiple energy leases. In recent years, aerial surveys have shown it’s become a year-round foraging habitat for the whales.
Through federal authorizations, the government limits how many individuals of a given species can be incidentally (not intentionally) harassed, disturbed or injured by an activity. Commercial fishing is an existing industry that has operated with such authorizations, which are now being reviewed and given to wind developers.