Seals May Forage For Food At Off Shore Wind Farms
New research suggests that offshore wind farms may be adopted by seals for hunting. As the number of these type of wind farms continues to rise there may be an effect on both seals and their prey, however scientists are unable to tell whether the effects will be positive or negative.
Wind farms are rows of wind turbines that make use of the wind to generate electricity. They tend to be located offshore so they can easily benefit from the strong coastal winds and can generate large amounts of electricity without any carbon emissions. Denmark for example gets 30 per cent of its energy needs from wind power.
In order to understand what the potential impact is environmentally of these wind farms, researchers tagged grey and harbour seals that reside on the Dutch and British coasts in the North Sea.
When they took a look at GPS data the scientists found that harbour seals tend to move in a “in a very striking grid pattern,” said Deborah Russell from the University of St. Andrews who led the study. The grid patterns showed the seals swam in straight lines between two wind farms.
“We could actually pinpoint where the wind turbines were by looking at the paths the seals travelled,” Russell said.
The researchers also noticed that both harbor and grey seals visited offshore oil and gas pipelines.
What the scientists think is happening, is that man-made structures are behaving like artificial reefs which provide shelter to potential prey which attracts the seals to hunt. Ms. Russell added that this is the first time sea mammals have shown they make use of such types of artificial structures for hunting.
It is still not clear what the environmental impact of these type of wind farms will be for their seals and the marine life they hunt. The effects may be positive if the farms increase the amount of prey available for these marine mammals. However Russell added that if the farms are simply aggregating existing prey, that could result in a depletion of populations.
Researchers in the future plan on tagging more seals in order to find out what percentage of the population source food from offshore wind farms and pipelines.
