Overview<\/b><\/p>\n
The fourth webinar in the \u201cLearning as We Go\u201d series, an ongoing forum for information exchange on offshore renewable energy topics, focused on the food web in the environment of wind farms. Presentations and dialogue described the structure and connections of marine food webs, explored change both in terms of immediate offshore wind farm vicinity and the broader regional area, and pointed to the need for continued learning via science and policy. This fourth webinar served as part of the annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium. <\/span><\/p>\n Welcomes were provided by Avi Mallinger, Associate Director of Strategy + Impact at Innovation Studio, host organization for the webinar series, and by program organizer Jennifer McCann, Director of U.S. Coastal Programs at the University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center, and Director of Extension for Rhode Island Sea Grant. McCann said the webinar series is helping answer the collective question of \u201cwhat do we need to know?\u201d with regards to offshore renewable energy topics, and indicated the material is assisting with real-life situations, such as farm siting discussions for the Gulf of Maine. <\/span><\/p>\n McCann then introduced a slate of participants with specific roles for the webinar: Carrie Cullen-Hitt, Executive Director of National Offshore Wind Research & Development Consortium, encouraged attendees to consider the organization\u2019s resources and funding tools and programs for supporting offshore renewable energy-focused projects; Elizabeth T. Methratta, Fisheries and Wind Scientist of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service\/Northeast Fisheries Science Center, served as moderator; George Maynard, Policy and Research Coordinator, of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen\u2019s Alliance, and Dave Stevenson, Fishery Management Council Coordinator of the Habitat and Ecosystem Services Division, NOAA, provided responses to the presentations; and Jennifer Dannheim, Researcher of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Germany) and Andrew Gill, Principal Scientist of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science (United Kingdom), gave the two program presentations on offshore wind turbines and the food web.<\/span><\/p>\n Presentations<\/b><\/p>\n The researchers split the discussion; Dannheim spoke about food webs in terms of the bottom part of the water column and the seabed \u2013 the lower trophic level \u2013 while Gill addressed web issues from the upper part of the column \u2013 the higher trophic level. Taken as a whole, the work approached turbines as artificial reefs, exploring how our manmade structures alter the dynamics of complex food webs serving many kinds of animal species and ecosystem processes. As the animals within these webs support human-focused activities, such as recreational and commercial fishing, data are needed to explain not only how offshore wind farms change animal life within immediate farm sites, but whether change is registered on a regional scale, and how behavior alterations on our side \u2013 such as if fish trawling can\u2019t take place in farms \u2013 impact the webs. <\/span><\/p>\n Comparing sensitive webs to many-pieced Jenga puzzles, Dannheim described the research she and her team have carried out concerning how energy is transitioned throughout the food web associated with the seabed and the bottom of the water column; animals eat, are eaten, live, breed, and die, and these activities make up quantifiable energy transactions within webs. These transactions are scientifically complex and support current understanding of changing habitat in the immediate area of turbines: the benthos, or seabed ecosystem, is enriched with organic matter as animals, such as mollusks, grow on the parts of the turbines that are underwater, and other animals are drawn to feed on them or find refuge. More study is needed, said Dannheim, so we can continue to learn about energy exchange in the food webs in the immediate area of turbines, as well as start to understand the even greater complexities of regional food webs. <\/span><\/p>\n Gill then spoke about web dynamics in the upper part of the water column, which is the habitat for many of the fish species caught via commercial or recreational fishing. Again, Gill said, food web makeup and\/or function could potentially shift on the eastern seaboard of the United States, should it be difficult or impossible for trawlers to navigate multiple farms. \u201cWhat happens if there are lots of farms? What would be the impact on the food web if fishing stops? These are the sort of questions regarding regional scale of effect that we need to be thinking of, in terms of the changes in the food web,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n Gill indicated that gaining a solid understanding of the specificities of ocean food webs will be important for creating a baseline of information that can then be used to monitor change as economic development alters the ocean environment. \u201cIt\u2019s not only the windfarms here; we need to be thinking about existing structures and other kinds of emerging technology in the ocean,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n Finally, Gill highlighted that emerging data on food webs at turbine sites stand to be critical for informing policy \u2013 economic, environmental, and societal \u2013 that could guide how people around the world make use of, protect, and enhance a wide variety of ocean resources, including fish stocks. <\/span><\/p>\n Both Maynard and Stevenson asked questions of the researchers concerning the extent to which the expansion of wind farm siting could impact the stocks, and Dannheim and Gill indicated that much more work will be needed to understand large scale impact. \u201cWe need to get at the connectivity issues, what happens at this larger scale,\u201d said Gill. \u201cThe data we are collecting now is a step towards this.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n At the end of the presentations, McCann thanked all attendees, and shared the date of the next webinar, Tuesday, October 20, 2020 from 9:00 \u2013 10:30 a.m. via Innovation Caf\u00e9. \u201cPeople are continuing to ask for these and we will be surveying our audiences for topics that they want to learn about.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Overview The fourth webinar in the \u201cLearning as We Go\u201d series, an ongoing forum for information exchange on offshore renewable energy topics, focused on the food web in the environment of wind farms. Presentations and dialogue described the structure and connections of marine food webs, explored change both in terms of immediate offshore wind farm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baird"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7741"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8087,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions\/8087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/offshore-renewable-energy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}