August 27, 2024 — Plans to build hundreds or even thousands of offshore wind turbines off the U.S. East Coast “will be the biggest change to the sea floor in the area since the last Ice Age ended about 14,000 years ago,” according to scientists.
Around 20 offshore wind lease areas are now planned for mainly soft bottom of sand or mud, with scattered hard substrate of gravel, cobble and rock, according to their recently published study.
As wind turbine arrays are built, they will add massive steel towers, electric power cables, and millions of tons of rock to protect the new industrial infrastructure.
“Wind farms will add a lot of hard structures to these areas, potentially altering the habitat and species that inhabit these areas, which will likely affect fisheries,” wrote the research team led by Kevin Stokesbury, dean of the School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
In its natural state, “the sand will move around but it doesn’t change the community” of marine life living there, said Stokesbury. Off the Mid-Atlantic coast particularly, the wave-swept sand bottom “is like the Great Plains before development,” he said.