Offshore Wind Power for Marine Conservation

Abstract

The seas of northern Europe are strongly affected by human activities and there is a great need for improved marine conservation. The same region is also the current hotspot for offshore wind power development. Wind farms can have negative environmental impacts during construction, but during the operational phase many organisms are attracted to the foundations and thereby may also find refuge from fisheries. Given the recent implementation of marine spatial planning in Europe and elsewhere, this is a critical time to address potential compatibility and synergies between marine conservation and wind power. This review concludes that offshore wind farms can be at least as effective as existing marine protected areas in terms of creating refuges for benthic habitats, benthos, fish and marine mammals. The degree of advantage for these organisms depends on the location of the wind farm and the level of imposed fishing restriction. Under certain conditions wind farms may even be more efficient means of conservation than ordinary marine protected areas. However, offshore wind farms can be negative for several species of seabirds, essentially as occupying preferred feeding or wintering grounds. In areas important to these seabirds wind farms may not comply with conservation. The results bring important messages to marine spatial planning as some but not all wind farms can be spatially combined with, and even synergistic to, marine conservation.

How larval traits of six flatfish species impact connectivity

“…). The ability to find the source and destination of young fish and the level of spatial structuring of populations is critical for the management of marine protected areas (Planes et al ; Berglund et al ), coastal development (Cicin‐Sain and Belfiore ), offshore wind farms (Hammar et al ), and fisheries (Fogarty et al ). For example, in the northeast of UK, the local turbot population collapsed in 1970s due to overfishing.…”

The externalities of energy production in the context of development of clean energy generation

“…Gradual increasing was then observed, and in 2012 the population inside Nysted offshore farm reached 29% of the baseline level. It should be stressed, however, that the decrease of porpoise habituation was not observed in Rødland II based, similarly to the Nysted farm, on gravity foundations and, as a consequence, there was no pile driving during placement (Hammar et al 2016). Furthermore, some monitoring results from another offshore wind farms in the Baltic and North Sea showed that porpoise inhabitation returned to normal levels after the construction works (see (Hammar et al 2016) and references given there) or even increased in comparison with the level before placement (Scheidat et al 2011).…”

Offshore Wind Energy: Good Practice in Impact Assessment, Mitigation and Compensation

“…by the cessation of fishing activity and the creation of artificial reefs. Furthermore, OWFs can even serve as refuges for marine fauna and flora that are nearly as effective as existing marine protected areas (Hammar et al, 2016). However, reliable international assessment -especially concerning the cumulative impacts of OWFs over a longer period -remains challenging.…”

“…Regarding the impacts of OWFs on benthos (fauna living in, on or nearby the seabed), an increase in their number was observed after OWF construction (Ashley et al, 2014;Coates et al, 2014;Dannheim et al, 2014;Vaissière et al, 2014;Bergman et al, 2015;Schuster et al, 2015;Hammar et al, 2016). However, the species composition changed as a result of the new habitats.…”

“…It has been shown that the distribution of resting seabirds substantially changes as a result of OWFs. However, not all bird species react in the same way: some bird species avoid OWFs, whereas others ignore them or are attracted to them (Furness et al, 2013;Bradbury et al, 2014;Mendel et al, 2014;Hammar et al, 2016).…”