Renewable energy sources like wind, waves, and tides can be harnessed to contribute to the growing demand for energy and to power the blue economy. Potential environmental effects must be monitored and mitigated to reduce harm to animals, habitats, and ecosystems and to limit conflicts with existing ocean and land users. To support responsible development, Tethys hosts documents, information, and resources on marine energy, wind energy, and potential effects on wildlife and the environment.
11,000+
Documents
500,000+ Annual
Pageviews
195+
Project Sites
3,000+ Tethys
Blast Subscribers
Tethys Mission
Tethys aims to advance marine energy and wind energy research, development, and deployment by improving access to environmental data and information for researchers, regulators, developers, students, educators, and other stakeholders. The collection of documents on Tethys preserves knowledge as the industries progress, provides a foundation for synthesis products, and aggregates reliable information in support of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Tethys Content
Key features of Tethys include the:
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Knowledge Base: Documents library with journal articles, conference papers, reports, and more.
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Map Viewer: Map with a subset of all content that can be identified with a geographic location.
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Events Calendar: Marine energy and wind energy conferences, workshops, webinars, and more.
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Marine Energy Metadata: Information on marine energy projects and research studies globally.
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Offshore Wind Metadata: Information on offshore wind energy farms around the world.
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Tethys Blast: Bi-weekly newsletter with announcements, events, new content, and news.
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Glossary: List of terms used to tag content, including definitions and links to relevant documents.
Tethys is also home to several international and U.S. research efforts dedicated to studying marine energy and wind energy’s environmental effects and sharing the state of the science:
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Wind Energy-Environmental Research & Engagement Network (WREN)
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U.S. Offshore Wind Synthesis of Environmental Effects Research (SEER)
These groups have developed several tools and resources to support the marine energy and wind energy communities, including:
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Risk Retirement: Resources to support simplified consenting for small marine energy projects.
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Monitoring Datasets Discoverability Matrix: Interactive tool that classifies monitoring datasets.
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Wind Energy Technologies Tool: Catalog of wind energy monitoring and mitigation technologies.
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Marine Energy Educational Resources: Marine energy materials designed for learners of all ages.
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Wind Energy Educational Resources: Wind energy materials designed for learners of all ages.
Tethys Team
Tethys is actively curated and maintained by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office and Wind Energy Technologies Office. The Tethys team is supported by researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Aquatera, and many other organizations that provide content and updates.
Website Development
Launched in 2011, Tethys is developed using Drupal, an open-source content management software, and draws on years of software and systems development expertise from the PNNL Development Team. Tethys aims to follow the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and FARR (FAIR, AI Readiness & Reproducibility) guiding principles. Tethys content is actively added and regularly reviewed, so it remains up to date and accurate. Feedback and suggestions from users are highly encouraged.
Connection to PRIMRE Network
Tethys is one of seven knowledge hubs within the U.S. Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMRE), which hosts additional marine energy data, information, and resources. Content from Tethys, Tethys Engineering, and other knowledge hubs are searchable in the centralized PRIMRE Search. Subscribe to the Tethys Blast and PRIMRE Blast newsletters to stay up to date.
Learn more about Tethys, Tethys Engineering, and their connection to PRIMRE in the following fact sheets:
Contact Us
Email us at tethys@pnnl.gov if you have questions or want to connect.



