birds

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has completed the first of three years of data collection in an offshore wind area via aerial surveys of birds and marine mammals as the state pursues its goal of achieving 50 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2030.

 

The survey is gathering the highest resolution images ever for a project of this scale. With each pixel corresponding to 1.5 centimeters on the ocean surface, the images provide sufficient detail to allow taxonomists to identify the species for an extremely high percentage of the birds and marine animals.

 

A website has been developed for the project that allows the public to see some of the different animals that have been recorded.

Experience from offshore wind development in Europe suggests that siting of facilities is an important consideration for minimizing impacts to bird species. Discussions during the FWS Marine Bird Science and Offshore Wind Workshop and the BOEM Atlantic Wind Energy Workshop in 2011 emphasized the importance of identifying bird “hot spots” and “cold spots.” BOEM is funding a study by USGS to create maps of predicted distributions for dozens of seabird species on the mid-Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This effort will create maps that span the entire Atlantic OCS, update the mid-Atlantic maps, and develop a process for updating the maps as new data becomes available. This study will incorporate all available science-quality seabird survey data (including data derived from ships, planes, telemetry, and other emerging platforms) into high resolution predictive maps of seabird occurrence and abundance along the Atlantic OCS. The objective of this study is to provide easily understandable information about the distribution of birds to aid offshore wind development siting decisions and reduce the risk of impacts to birds.

The primary tools for the assessment of population abundance and spatial distribution are aerial and shipboard line-transect surveys. These surveys typically employ visual detection of animals at the surface, though more recently passive acoustic monitoring has been incorporated into these surveys to improve detection of marine mammals. The objective of this study is to improve the knowledge base of Federal agencies with living marine resource responsibilities through improved surveys of marine mammals, sea turtles, and avian species.