Abstract
Marine energy devices (turbines, wave energy converters [WECs], or other devices) cannot be deployed without gaining regulatory permission. Understanding potential environmental effects and the risks posed to marine animals, habitats, and ecosystem processes drive the majority of regulatory analyses that support permitting. The level of confidence that stakeholders feel in these analyses will help form their opinions of marine energy projects, and either help or hinder getting devices in the water.
Working closely with faculty and students affiliated with the Atlantic Marine Energy Center (AMEC), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) staff helped catalog the environmental questions raised by coastal stakeholders that are specific to deployments of tidal turbines in the northern areas of AMEC (New Hampshire, New York, etc.) as well as WECs and ocean current turbines in the southern part of AMEC’s area (North Carolina). Providing access to knowledge and expertise for coastal stakeholders through workshops and direct communications, PNNL staff have sought to inform and support permitting efforts at AMEC, and share information and communication tools about environmental risks as concerns arise.
Responding to emerging recognition of entanglement risks to sea turtles, PNNL supported AMEC staff in North Carolina in their work to avoid sea turtle entanglement in mooring lines of oceanographic instruments and marine energy devices, in coordination with sea turtle experts and state and federal authorities. PNNL provided summaries of research and outreach materials that put the relative risk of entanglement in marine energy mooring lines and oceanographic instrument deployments in context. This information is key to evaluating the risks to sea turtles; it will help form the basis for effective mitigation strategies and inform entanglement risk for other marine animals as well. This presentation will particularly focus on the approach to addressing stakeholder concerns regarding these entanglement risks.