Assessment of the acoustic effects of offshore wind turbines on the marine ecosystem.

Abstract

The University of Rhode Island recently completed an assessment of the potential acoustic and other effects of the wind farms on the ecosystem. A developer has proposed to initially construct eight 3.6‐MW wind turbines on lattice jacket structures 5 km south of Block Island and approximately 100 turbines in a second stage 20 km east of Block Island. Construction on the first stage is tentatively planned for summer of 2011, and pile driving will be the main source of noise. The main source of operational noise will likely be vibration from the turbine conducted through the lattice jacket structure into the water. Two passive aquatic listener (PAL) systems were deployed 5 km of Block Island from October 6 to November 11, 2008. Two more PAL systems were deployed on meteorological buoys, one near the first farm and one near the larger farm, for 12 months in 2009/2010. Using data from the PALs, ambient noise budgets and histograms were computed for this pre‐construction phase. The largest sources of noise were found to be shipping, wind, rain, and biological sources. An assessment of the effects of the offshore wind farms will be presented for both the construction and operational phases.