DETROIT – Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island is the United States’ first offshore wind farm. The 30-megawatt, five-turbine offshore wind farm began commercial operations in December 2016 and generates enough energy to power 17,000 homes. And it turns out, it’s perfectly safe, and sometimes even beneficial, for fish.
A seven-year-long study, the first of its kind in the United States, titled, “Demersal fish and invertebrate catches relative to construction and operation of North America’s first offshore wind farm,” was published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science on March 29. The study was paid for by the wind farm developers because Rhode Island coastal regulators mandated it.
The ICES Journal of Marine Science is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering oceanography and marine biology. It’s published by Oxford University Press for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, of which it is the official journal.
Researchers examined data collected between 2012 and 2019 from monthly trips to the offshore wind farm in a commercial trawler that navigated easily between the turbines. Block Island’s wind turbines are a half nautical mile apart, and the US East Coast projects in the pipeline will be a full nautical mile apart. Nearly 664,000 fish representing 61 species were collected during the study.
The researchers found that there was no significant negative effect on fish that live near the bottom of the sea – demersal fish – and invertebrate populations during Block Island’s construction and operation.
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