Attention Whales: We are Listening!

The New York Offshore Wind Alliance and the Alliance for Clean Energy New York were on hand for an important announcement in September related to the responsible development of offshore wind in the region. Empire Wind and the Wildlife Conservation Society announced the extension to 2028 of their historic agreement to monitor large whales in the lease area of Empire Wind, an offshore wind project located off the southern coast of Long Island. The 2.1-gigawatt project – among several projects contracted by NYSERDA – is being developed by Equinor and bp through their 50-50 strategic partnership in the US and will power more than 1 million homes.

The new agreement ensures that essential data to protect wildlife in the New York Bight will be collected during all phases of the project. The parties announced, “two deployed moored acoustic monitoring buoys located in the New York Bight within Empire Wind lease area have already compiled more than 2,000 days of monitoring data and have detected more than 18,000 whale sounds in near real-time, including more than 2,600 detections this year alone.”

The buoy technology – designed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – detects the distinct sounds of different whale species. Data collected will teach us about whale occurrence and behavior in and around the Empire Wind lease area. To date, sounds that are detected and recorded by the buoys came from four large whale species: fin, humpback, sei, and North Atlantic right whales. The most detected whale sound was a low frequency “downsweep” vocalization produced by fin whales.

The buoys are part of a broad effort to generate critical data prior to construction of the Empire Wind project and will continue to provide near real-time monitoring for more than a decade, both during and after construction, for the four species of large whales. This information will help Empire Wind and future offshore wind developments protect these species and gain insights into the risks.

“As a new industry, it is crucial that we establish best-in -class practices throughout the development phase of our projects from the start,” said Siri Espedal Kindem, President Equinor Wind US. “The technology that will be deployed over this ten-year agreement provides Equinor the ability to assess our activities in real-time and ensure that we are putting marine life first in our operations.”

Dr. Howard C. Rosenbaum of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants Program stated, “This ongoing collaboration provides invaluable data on how these whales are using the New York Bight. In turn, this data can be used to inform best practices to minimize impacts on wildlife from the development of offshore wind energy.”

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Information that is collected from the project is available to the public on whalesofnewyork.wcs.org and dcs.whoi.edu. The data can also be accessed at an exhibit kiosk at Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

Information about the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Offshore Wind Program is available here.