Abstract
The distribution of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) overlaps with offshore wind lease areas along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Wind energy developers are required to mitigate impacts to these animals. Informed mitigation requires an understanding of the spatial and temporal distribution of right whales. Our research included nine tasks: 1) develop predictive models of right whale distribution; 2) estimate uncertainty in right whale predictions; 3) develop financial risk assessment scenarios; 4) determine the model’s ability to forecast right whale distribution; 5) develop a commercialization/marketing strategy; 6) assess financial risk; and 7) analyze economic tradeoffs; 8) develop a decision support framework; and 9) deploy a commercialization strategy. To complete these tasks, we built density surface models that successfully predicted right whale distribution and estimated uncertainty in right whale predictions. We identified tradeoffs between financial costs to renewable energy developers and protected species conservation by coupling an offshore wind energy construction simulation with our density surface model to quantify the number of right whales exposed to pile-driving noise under ten financial risk scenarios, with costs assigned to each of the financial risk scenarios. We then built an interactive prototype decision support app to demonstrate the tradeoff analysis, and showcased the app at a stakeholder workshop attended by employees of Orsted and Equinor.