In the waters off southern New England, there are efforts to find a balance between competing environmental interests. Alternative energy technology has led to the construction of multiple windfarms in the area — but as more ships are needed to bring building materials out to sea, concerns about protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales and other species like humpbacks from ship collisions have risen.
When the Vineyard Wind turbine blade south of Martha’s Vineyard broke off into the ocean on July 13, there were universal calls for officials to find out what caused the incident, the Vineyard Gazette reported.
It is how to proceed that has sparked a debate.
Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, the head of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), some Island fishermen and many residents of Nantucket Island are calling for a complete halt to the construction of offshore wind energy off the Massachusetts coast.
Others believe that the energy source is necessary for the fight against climate change.
“The offshore wind industry is a critical component of Massachusetts’ economy and the country’s transition to clean, affordable energy,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement to the Gazette. “It is essential that we gain a full understanding of what happened here and how it can be prevented in the future.”
Impacting the whales
Officials were already concerned about the impact of the turbines on the whales that populate the waters south of the island.
Some believe artificial intelligence could help balance renewable energy needs with the survival of whales and other marine life.
Ross Eaton is the chief scientist at Awarion, an autonomous lookout system. Elaine Coleman, the former vice president of Charles River Analytics, said that Eaton “and a whole host of smart engineers and scientists” have been working on the system.
“It’s based on AI and machine learning, and it’s a computer vision program that is able to detect whales at a distance,” Coleman told “Rhode Island PBS Weekly.” “We’re actually here to collect data. We need to have a lot of imagery of whales. We want to see whales at a distance really far away when we just spot them, maybe as the back is surfacing and breaking the water.”
According to the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the majority of the 22 beached whales on the East Coast found early last year died from ship strikes or collisions with vessels. Every year, cargo, cruise and fishing boats kill an estimated 20,000 whales, university officials said.
“It’s devastating when you see a massive, magnificent creature lying dead on a shore somewhere,” Coleman said. “I think historically we haven’t been very kind to the whales. When you think about the history of whaling and all sorts of tremendous negative aspects. I don’t know what it is, but I think many, many people share this view that we have to protect and care for them.
“We met with Vineyard Wind. They told us that they really needed to be able to protect marine life when they’re out and they’re doing offshore wind. And we said that we had a system that we were interested in performance testing and we came together.”
Vineyard Wind planned to install 62 turbines in an area about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. It was the first commercial-scale project to receive its permitting and was seen as a pioneer, the Gazette reported.
The company’s project has been halted during an ongoing federal investigation.
Skepticism about the project’s success
Andrews-Maltais had expressed skepticism about the project earlier this year.
“As native peoples or indigenous peoples, we’ve been the stewards of the lands and waters since time immemorial. We have the migration of the great North Atlantic right whale that is impacted by all this,” she told Rhode Island PBS Weekly. “We have other migratory species that are going be impacted by all this plus with the constant disturbance of the seabed floor kicks up siltation and that in itself can almost choke the life out of the water. So what we had been asking for and calling upon the United States to do is have a moratorium until we can take what we have in place and really study that. What are those impacts?”
In the wake of July’s broken turbine blade, Andrews-Maltais sent a letter to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Gazette reported. She asked the agency, which is investigating Vineyard Wind, to enact a moratorium on all offshore wind energy projects nationwide until all turbine blades are inspected thoroughly and more testing is conducted.
“They should be shutting down every single offshore wind project until they know what is going on,” she told the newspaper. “We warned them of these potential catastrophic failures.”
Meanwhile, more debris from the broken turbine blade fell into the ocean and was expected to reach Martha’s Vineyard, the Cape Cod Times reported.
On July 29, several pieces of the football field-sized blade detached from the hub. Some large sections sank to the floor of the ocean at the base of the turbine.
The town of Nantucket issued an alert on July 30 for residents to be aware of popcorn-sized pieces of foam that might wash up on the shore of the island sometime this week. But Vineyard Wind spokesperson Craig Gilvarg wrote in an email to the newspaper on July 31 that new models based on shifting winds suggested that the foam and other debris “is “more likely to be visible on Martha’s Vineyard, rather than being concentrated on the south beaches of Nantucket.”
Rich Delaney, the executive director of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, told the Gazette that offshore wind energy was crucial toward helping Massachusetts battle climate control. He sees rising temperatures and changing seas as a far bigger problem than a broken turbine blade.
“We have been saying for a long time that the two most serious threats to right whales and the right whale population have been ship strikes and getting entangled, usually in fishing gear,” Delaney told the newspaper. “But in reality, the existential threat is climate change.”
Juli Vanderhoop of the Wampanoag Tribe said earlier this year that the U.S. had not done its “due diligence” in finding energy alternatives.
“Wind power seems to be a good alternative, but where do we put it? Where’s the place of development that comes with the least amount of impact?” she told “Rhode Island PBS Weekly.” “Maybe AI and possibilities would be a start, but really to give the space and the care that is necessary to the species that we love to see them prosper, then what are the extensive measures that need to be taken going forward, mapped out?”
