Atlantic Offshore Wind Environmental Research Recommendations

Improve understanding of the technical limitations of installing noise monitors via different methods (seabed tethering, buoys) to aid in cost reduction and improve understanding of how marine mammals interact with environment and OSW developments.

Examine existing and develop new mitigation techniques for reducing OSW-related impacts including from EMF, changes in water quality, noise, benthic disturbance, collisions, and displacement.

Develop a novel physiological tag to measure the potential energetic costs (e.g., energy consumption, metabolic rates) behavioral response, including displacement to OSW development to improve our understanding of the potential consequences of response.

Develop accurate and spatially explicit predictive habitat models of these species using environmental and movement data.

Develop a sound library of calls for all marine mammal species, as well as automatic detectors and long-range automated unmanned vehicles for passive acoustic studies.

Develop sound threshold exposure criteria for that are contextual and apply to species that hear through particle motion rather than sound pressure and all invertebrates to better understand the species-specific behavioral effects of noise.

Collect or use existing data to determine how ecological processes including weather events and climate change influence population dynamics.

Assess changes to the benthos and organic enrichment around OSW turbines through targeted monitoring studies of the benthic community which differentiate OSW effects from other regional and global stressors

Develop methods and programs for long-term monitoring at OSW facilities including those to examine seasonal benthic change and whale distribution, abundance, and behavior.

Establish baseline of physiological parameters including stress hormones

Develop set of criteria that describe what factors create suitable habitat

Evaluate existing research and mitigation approaches to determine whether it is appropriate to extrapolate results from related species, or from other industries (e.g., oil and gas) to guide future research.

Evaluate effects of OSW construction and operations on the abundance, diversity, and distribution of important prey species.

Evaluate changes in vessel traffic patterns related to OSW activities, including vessel traffic directly associated with OSW as well as potential changes in other traffic patterns in response to OSW development

Use historic stranding data as well as health assessments of wild animals to answer questions such as whether stranded or entangled animals are healthy or not

Evaluate ambient sound levels (soundscapes) in OSW development areas prior to development (baseline) and during all lifecycle phases, including calculating the total acoustic ‘budget’ (TAB) of OSW projects from initial site surveys to installation to routine surveys to operating noise.

Determine spatially and temporally explicit species presence in OSW development areas and historic and seasonal changes in presence, as well as absence.

Understand effects of multiple stressors on at-risk marine life populations, including physiological and demographic consequences, cumulative habitat disturbance/loss, population dynamics to better support adaptive management.

Test the use of acoustic measurements to evaluate ecosystem changes around wind turbines.

Improve understanding of aerial survey design sufficiency for Environmental Impact Assessment

Examine the degree to which marine mammals experience potential auditory effects of various types (such as masking, Lombard effect, or Temporary Threshold Shifts) with existing sound conditions.

Explore the effects of floating wind farms on marine mammals, particularly seal movement and dive behavior around floating wind farm developments

Understanding the degree to which artificial reef effects change food webs, and in turn alter bioenergetics due to changes in foraging opportunities.

Investigate the impacts of cumulative anthropogenic sound on marine mammals.

Examine the distribution and habitat use of larvae and juvenile animals

Effects of changes in water stratification and turbidity on phytoplankton and zooplankton community structure, biomass and larval settlement success and recruitment

Examine fish and invertebrate condition (stomach content/growth rate/fecundity/energy content/etc.) for species of interest at OSW farms and relate to natural conditions to understand the effects of OSW development.

Examine how disturbance of benthic habitat from OSW construction affects bird abundance/composition, diet, and health in the short term.

Understand changes in currents, wave energy, sediment flow, and stratification around OSW turbines and the degree to which these changes affect surrounding ecosystems, including migration and dynamic habitat of species.

Examine how the exclusion of bottom trawling changes the development of benthos and in turn affects mobile fauna in the longer term (>5 years).

Assess effects of floating OSW, including tethering/mooring cables, on movement of aquatic species, including migration pattern and the degree to which these act as barriers to movement.

Assess how fish and wildlife migratory movements change in response to offshore wind energy development (including in relation to stressors such as sound during different project phases, and while taking into account changes due to climate change or other ecological stressors).

Explore the effect of seabed scour from anchoring and cables and how long benthic communities will take to recover from this effect.

Study phytoplankton composition and production around OSW farms in conjunction with oceanographic change (e.g., mixing, destratification events, nutrient concentration, suspended particulate matter)

Understand the conditions that could attract birds to artificial lighting associated with OSW farms, including aspects such as lighting color, flashing of lights, the amount of time lights are on (e.g., once they are triggered by ADLS), weather conditions, and stage in their annual cycle.

Assess effects of parameters on collision risk such as age, sex, behavior, season, weather conditions, lighting, turbine height and/or spacing, windfarm location/shape relative to colonies, predominant ecological function of area.

Examine how OSW development-related stressors impact the full life history cycle of fishes.

Investigate long-term changes in habitats due to OSW-related disturbance, including their rates of recovery and nature of change (such as changes in seabed use, species abundance, and ecosystem services).

Assess the effect of turbine characteristics (e.g., size, spacing) and micro-siting (e.g., placement, spatial configuration) on the degree of effects

Develop integrated methods to improve understanding of baseline abundance and density of birds, including integrating aerial and boat-based survey data, and methods to examine densities during both day and night.

Assess OSW-related effects to different types of sandbank and determine if there is a point beyond which features cannot recover from disturbance to improve understanding of long-term and cumulative effects.

Relate flight patterns within operational wind farms to changing airflow patterns to better understand meso-avoidance.

Improve understanding of baseline meta-population dynamics, including connectivity, immigration/emigration, and how this relates to life history, survival, and reproduction.

Assess net change (gain/loss) in hard substrate habitat resulting from OSW farms and effects on marine life habitat use, including providing a quantitative estimation of change of the surface area of (natural and artificial) hard substrata in full lease areas.

Investigating the potential for population level effects of entanglement of whales in mooring lines for floating wind devices. This would use strandings data, monitoring of entanglements, and monitoring. This study would help to better inform population models.