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Reviewed by: Jan Vanaverbeke

Last Update: August 31st, 2020

At the 17th Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium Session #2: Changes in Habitats and Ecosystems, Jan Vanaverbeke (Senior Scientist, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences) explained how offshore wind structures can affect marine ecology within benthic environments both seemingly positively and negatively.

One observed negative effect of offshore wind development is the loss of sandy sediments. The absence of this core benthic element leads to the correlated absence of those organisms that inhabit said environment. This vacancy ultimately interferes with the organism recycling process which Vanaverbeke explains as the process of turning organic matter (like deposited plankton) into nutrients and returning them back into the water column. These vital nutrients are typically utilized to fuel phytoplankton blooms, which are at the basis of the marine food chain. many members of the basic food chain i.e. fish and crustaceans.

However, a seemingly positive effect is the increase in hard substrate that offshore wind turbines provide. Turbine structures act as an artificial reef which attracts fish and large crustaceans. This high density and high biodiversity of organisms on offshore wind turbines, and the associated processes, account for a similar organism recycling process that occurs in a natural benthic environment.

Vanaverbeke notes the importance of monitoring the cumulative effects on these environments as an increased number of wind farms will have a greater impact. He also notes that assessing the impacts of these interactions calls for targeted hypothesis-driven research.