 Recordings in progress. Hello everyone, good afternoon and welcome to Offshore Wind and Wildlife presented by Maine Audubon. I am Nick Lund, our advocacy and outreach manager and I'm joined today by two colleagues to update you on the latest happenings regarding offshore wind development in Gulf of Maine and to discuss what we know and we don't know about potential wildlife impacts from floating offshore wind in the Gulf. Let me introduce you to my colleagues. First with me today is Sarah Hagerty, our conservation biologist and GIS manager for Maine Audubon. She's also a member of the state of Maine's Offshore Wind Roadmap Environment and Wildlife Working Group which I can say easily without stumbling. Also here is my colleague Eliza Donahue, Maine Audubon's advocacy director and our offshore wind policy lead, hello Eliza. All right, Maine Audubon is dedicated to the protection of wildlife and wildlife habitat in Maine and nothing in our history has presented as severe a threat as climate change. Centuries of burning fossil fuels has begun to alter the very essence of the places that we know and love in Maine. We know these changes are happening because we can measure them and we know the changes will accelerate without quick and decisive action. Forever altering the state of Maine and the state that we've worked so long and hard to protect. Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is fundamental to our climate change response. Renewable energy is not only cleaner than fossil fuels but can be produced locally, ridding us of the unpredictability of foreign sources. Floating offshore wind deployed off the coast of Maine has the potential to supply the electricity needs for Maine many times over. However, like any development, there are impacts. In particular, Maine Audubon wants to understand the potential impacts of floating offshore wind on seabirds, migratory birds and bats, marine mammals and fish and lobster. It is critical for Maine Audubon to understand potential impacts so that we can use our seat at the table to push as hard as we can for strategies to avoid or minimize those impacts. And it's critical that we must remember to weigh the potential impacts of offshore wind against the ongoing devastation brought by climate change. A study published in the Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences found that fossil fuel plants and their impacts, which include upstream coal mining, on-site collision and electrocution with operating plant equipment, downstream poisoning and death from acid rain, mercury pollution and climate change kill 35 times more birds per kilowatt hour, than wind power. So meaning if all things were equal and you had equal amounts of fossil fuel power generation and wind power generation, wind power would be 35 times less harmful to birds. So we've recently published an article summarizing our findings about the potential impacts to Gulf of Maine wildlife in our Habitat Magazine. And for those who haven't seen that, I'm going to put it right in the chat here. There we go. The development of this article required the study of dozens of scientific journals. We discussed with scientists and policy leaders. And what we're hoping to do today is summarize what we found. We want to talk about what the science says that we expect potential impacts to wildlife in the Gulf to be, to discuss what knowledge gaps remain and talk about where Maine Audubon is in the process of using the levers available to us to push for wildlife protections. And then of course, we want to answer some questions. So we have a full agenda today, quick technical thing. As you all know, we've done this for years now. We're on Zoom webinar. I can't see you or hear you. If you have questions, we're going to save them all for the end. Please don't put them in the chat where they will be lost easily. Please put them in the Q and A box. I've seen a bunch of people doing that already. We're going to put them there. We'll get to them at the end. Thank you. We are recording it. I did remember to do that and it'll be posted online at the end for sharing or whatever you want. And those are all the technical things we have. So now I'm going to get started. And one thing I had not been doing is moving my slides, but here we go. Here's a reminder of who we are. And then again, I'm going to talk. This is the agenda that we're going to cruise through today. We're going to talk a little bit from Sarah, hear from Sarah about climate change and offshore wind. Then we're going to run through the impacts that we outlined in our article, talking about the potential impacts to seabirds, migratory birds and bats, fish and lobster, marine mammals. And then we're going to hear from Eliza about some of the opportunities that she is engaging in to work between offshore wind and conserving wildlife conservation. And then we're going to take some questions. Good. So without further ado, let me turn it over to Sarah to talk about climate change and offshore wind. Thank you, Nick. And hello, everyone. Excited to have such a good group here, a large group. I want to put today's conversation into context a little bit. So I'll reiterate what Nick said about the threat of climate change to means natural ecosystem and native species. You've probably heard some of these statistics already, but they're really worth repeating as we get started on this conversation. The state of Maine is warming faster than the global average. So compared to the average of the entire earth, the state of Maine is warming faster. Related and just as frightening as that is that the Gulf of Maine itself is warming faster than 99% of the world's oceans. 99% of the world's oceans. Because of that, we're seeing the effects. We've seen ocean heat waves. We've seen ocean acidification. We've got sea level rise of eight inches and rising. That's already happening here in the Gulf of Maine. And it's having an effect on the species that live here as well. We've got prey species disappearing and that can impact our sea birds and whales. We have new species moving in. Migration patterns and timing has changed. We're seeing sea turtles coming further north, staying longer and ending up cold stunned more often because when winter does kick in, they're sort of stuck. We've even seen the lobster forecast models suggesting that the huge productivity we've had here in the Gulf of Maine may have peaked and that productivity may be heading to Canada where it's still a little bit cooler. At the same time, we are still seeing record levels of greenhouse gas emissions. There was this dramatic drop during the pandemic when basically everything was shut down and we weren't seeing huge greenhouse gas emissions but we are making up for that dip. We hit a new record in emissions in 2021 and these increases are in all sectors. It's in industry, it's in our households, it's our transportation, our electricity supply and we really can't keep going in this direction because of what we've already seen so far and what we expect to come. So we have a lot of work to do to turn things around and we need to be doing that fairly quickly. Fortunately, at the same time, we're also seeing the adoption of policies intended to combat this issue. At the federal level, the Biden administration has made addressing climate change a top priority and they've set a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. That is incredibly fast. On top of that, they have a goal of deploying 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind specifically with the idea of having the US be a leader in that part of the energy sector. For context, manors use about two and a half, 2.4 gigawatts of power annually. So we're talking about 45 gigawatts just off the coast of the US. And Maine has the potential to be part of that effort because all of our offshore wind will likely be floating offshore wind. So we can be part of that leadership role. At the state level, we've also set an ambitious goal of having 80% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030 with a goal of 100% by 2050. These are huge goals and we're just starting on the effort to achieve them. So things are moving and they're moving pretty quickly and we have to. We should have started this probably 20 years ago, but so we're playing catch up right now. But we need to be moving at this rapid pace to avoid some of the worst predictions that the climate scientists are forecasting. So the graph here shows the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's plan for offshore wind for the US. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or BOEM is the federal agency that basically is in charge of offshore wind energy. They're part of the Department of the Interior and because most offshore wind will happen in federal waters, they're the federal agency that runs the process with the states and developers. So this is the timeline on the bottom here. You can't see this, but these lines, the vertical lines are 2022, 23, 24. At the top we have the New York Byte, all of these offshore wind leases and they run through the bottom line, which isn't really showing up online screen, is the Gulf of Maine. The Gulf of Maine is on BOEM's list for offshore wind. We're a few years out. We're the least far along compared to the others, but the map on the right shows the wind energy leases that have been sold on the east coast of the US already. And we are just a few years down the line. And one of the other projects, one of the leases, couple of leases that were sold just this week, I believe, were off the coast of California and that's one that we're paying attention to because they also will have to use floating offshore wind. They have much deeper waters than we do and so they're a little bit ahead of us and we can keep track of what happens out there to help guide what we do in the Gulf of Maine as well. Here in the Gulf of Maine, there are some specific things that are happening in terms of moving offshore wind forward. The state's offshore wind roadmap is out in draft form. It just came out, they met on Tuesday. The governor's energy office is hoping to finalize that roadmap sometime in January. The goal is to, this is a roadmap for creating an economic development plan for the offshore wind industry here in Maine but incorporates input from fisheries and wildlife and as well as ports and markets to develop that economic development plan. Last year, the state submitted an application to BOEM for a proposed floating offshore wind research array in the Gulf of Maine in federal waters and we expect a response from BOEM hopefully by the end of this year, it could come in January but that is coming soon. And finally, just in the last week or 10 days, five companies expressed interest to BOEM on developing offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Maine. So things are moving. This is all really exciting. There's a lot happening and happening very quickly and that's why we here at Maine Audubon and many of our partners are very engaged in making sure the offshore wind energy industry is built and operated responsibly. Anything back to you? Thank you, Sarah. Let's keep going on and talking about potential impacts to wildlife. Before we get started, I think it's helpful to show this slide. This is a general schematic of what it looks like to have an offshore wind array. One important thing to note is that we are talking about floating offshore turbines. Nowhere else in the United States at this point do we have floating offshore turbines and they're a little different than what exists out there in the world. There are decades of experience in Europe with fixed bottom turbines that are drilled into the seabed and are placed right into the seafloor. We are working on having floating turbines because the Gulf of Maine is deeper. It would essentially look like this. You have the turbine floating and we don't quite know exactly what the final design of the turbine itself would look like yet, but some of the ones being developed by the University of Maine have the look of this turbine here. They would be anchored into the seafloor. They would be connected to each other by a series of cables that would likely be buried underground. The turbines are up to 850 feet tall, which is a very big turbine. It's likely that they will be placed about a mile apart from each other and they will be connected by these cables and then connected to some kind of offshore substation, whether it's floating or on the seabed. There will be additional cables that connect to onshore substations, which distribute the power from there. So this is a sort of a rough schematic, but when we think about what it looks like in the water, it generally looks something like this. So now let's get started talking about the wildlife that's in the Gulf. Seabirds, this is a great sheer water. The Gulf of Maine is a haven for seabirds in all seasons. Thousands of individuals nest on near shore islands in the Gulf in the summer. Here's a quick map of some of those. And they hunt for fish and other foods throughout the Gulf. Dozens of seabird species move through the Gulf of Maine area during migration seasons as well. So you have birds moving in and out of the Gulf and across the Gulf, nesting in the summers on some of these red-dotted islands and others, and then moving to and from those islands to get food and bring it back to their chicks. Outside of those breeding seasons, they move through the Gulf, either as they migrate to warmer climates or as they are here just riding out the winters in the Gulf. These birds include gulls, terns, razor reels, sheer waters, cormorants, and many more. Each of these families of birds has their own particular seasons and uses in the Gulf, their favorite foods. They have different flight heights and styles. And the presence of seabirds, the presence of turbines in the Gulf will mean different things to different birds. So what do we know so far? A lot of the lessons that we have on seabirds, we have gathered from fixed bottom turbines in the North Sea in Europe. And they've shown us that there are a couple of different effects of seabirds. Seabirds may be displaced from the areas where there are turbine arrays and move into new areas, or they may change their movements to avoid turbines in migratory seasons. They may collide with turbines or blades, or they may be attracted to the turbines because there's maybe new sources of food or roosting opportunities at the sites. That sort of avoidance is called displacement. Displacement requires birds to find new areas, which means they have to expand energy and work to locate new areas of food. The overall impacts of displacement depend generally on sort of how far they have to move and how difficult it is for the birds to resume normal behaviors. The impacts of attraction when your birds are attracted to turbines vary. If you're being attracted to turbines, you may increase your risk of collision or exposure to noises. But at the same time, if there are additional feeding areas that open up because of the presence of turbine, if turbines themselves act as reefing areas, populations may benefit from that new food source. Studies in Europe have shown us that different species and different ages of birds react differently to the presence of turbines. For example, in Europe, studies have shown that loons and gannets showed varying levels of displacement. Many other species, including shearwaters and alcids, which is the family of birds that includes puffins and razorbills, and terns showed sort of an inconsistent displacement, sort of not strongly one way or the other. And birds like cormorants and gulls showed attraction to turbines. What we know about in the Gulf of Maine is that during the breeding season, species typically forage within about 30 miles of their colonies of these red islands here, but spread throughout the Gulf in other seasons. And we have this map here that Sarah will talk about a little bit more, I think, but move throughout the Gulf in other seasons. Finally, research suggests that some species, including cormorants and that that alcid families of puffins and razorbills and mirrors may be sensitive to underwater construction noise. Let me turn it over to Sarah now to talk about some of the knowledge gaps. Thanks, Nick. And I want to start by saying, I'm going to talk about the things that we don't know, the questions that we still have that may be important, but I want to be clear that this doesn't mean that these are necessarily problems. It means that we don't know and we need to gather the information to fill those data gaps. And this picture shows leeches storm petrol and it's just seven birds, but it shows you the full use of the Gulf of Maine and in 2019 using GPS loggers. And so every, based on what, or reiterating what Nick said, every species is different. Different species use the Gulf differently at different times of year and at different stages in life. And so what we need to do is really understand that better, specifically with those species that are here and in relation to where the turbines may end up. The displacement may be a bigger factor for some species and not at all for others. And collision is a risk for certain species, but not others. With the larger turbines that we'll probably have here in the offshore environment, the spacing between them will probably be larger and that can have two potential effects. Again, we don't know. It could end up being a larger array that species that would move around it will now have a larger area they have to avoid. Or it may be that that spacing provides an area that they can actually move comfortably through that they wouldn't have when they were closer. So we really, we just don't know. We need to gather more information. And again, exactly where the seabirds are when they're not near their breeding areas. We're really, it's a lot easier to study species when they're concentrated and for a short period of time. But this is a great map showing the Northern Ghana and their fall migration. They, as you can see, the red areas really where they're mostly concentrated. And yes, they move mostly along the shore, but you can see there's a fair amount of them that cut across the gulf. And so we don't know how many species are gonna be doing this and where and what the potential impacts are and where that is in relation to the turbines that could go in there. So this could really help us with our sighting or where we locate the turbines if we know more about where the birds are and how they're using the gulf. Again, to the extent that we do have information from what's happened in Europe, we need to know exactly how closely it will parallel what's gonna happen here in the Gulf of Maine. We have some different species. We're gonna have different, the turbines will be different. They're for the most part gonna be larger and the spacing will be different and it's gonna be floating and what's in Europe and has been in Europe for a couple of decades now is fixed bottom. And so we need to know what the differences and similarities will be so that we can try and predict how species here will react. And then finally, and you're gonna hear this throughout our talk today is we really don't understand the cumulative effects yet of wind farms. So I showed you that map with the wind leases that have already been sold along the Eastern seaboard. A lot of the species we'll talk about today actually migrate up and down the Eastern seaboard. And so over time they're going to be interacting with more and more of these wind arrays and we don't know what sort of effect, if at all, if any at all that will have on the different species. And so what we need to do is we need better data. We need more data on who, what, when, where, and why and how the different seabords are using the Gulf. There are some studies that have gotten started because of the roadmap process and the bone process to try and fill these gaps so that we have enough information to make a good start and be responsible as we start seeing wind turbines getting out there. We need to make sure that we're putting turbines in the places that will have the least harm and as far away from the breeding, feeding and migratory areas that our Gulf seabirds need. And then there will still probably be some impacts. And so we need to make sure that we have the best mitigation options available that can reduce all of these threats and help avoid these threats to our Gulf main seabirds. And finally, if there are things that can't be avoided, that we need to have compensation to improve the populations overall to make up for any impacts that do happen from offshore wind to our Gulf main seabirds. All right, thank you, Sarah. That's seabirds. We will now move to migratory birds and bats. Billions of individual birds get the heck out of dodge when the weather is like this and they fly to places where they can eat insects. Each spring, we have billions across North America. We have billions of warblers, virios, tannagers, ducks, shorebirds, raptors and more coming up from wintering areas in the South to take advantage of the warming North. We also in Maine have three migratory bat species, the hoary bat, the silver-haired bat and the eastern red bat moving around. So what does the science show about how they may use the Gulf of Maine? Well, first of all, there is a lot of variation by species and how birds migrate in different weather conditions. But overall, the flight altitudes of migratory birds are typically well above the projected height of the turbine blades. So we're talking 850 plus. Most often when migratory birds are flying, they're flying at several thousand feet. That's a good thing, which means that the birds that do fly over the Gulf, especially under fair weather conditions, will be flying at a height where they won't be at risk of collision. We also know from research that migrants tend to concentrate inland rather than flying directly over the Gulf itself. Although there is some variation, we have some knowledge that we need to get about how exactly that works and how different species use it. We do know that small numbers of migratory bats are known to navigate across the Gulf, most often in fall and most often in calm conditions. We know that factors on the turbines themselves, such as lighting, the characteristics of the turbine, the spacing and the proximity to high bird use areas may affect the likelihood of attraction or avoidance to the turbines. These strategies and the mitigation measures are well known among developers and us and they are improving with technology all the time. So those are some tools that we can use to minimize that impact. But let me turn it over to Sarah now to talk again about what we don't know. Thanks, Nick. So similar to with the seabirds, we really don't know where everybody's moving all the time. These are a couple of snapshots from a few studies that have shown that, yes, for the most part, coastal migrating, songbird species stick pretty tight to the coast. But there are some species that are a little more tolerant of moving over open water and we need to understand that a little bit better. We need to understand, is that a risk at all? Are they really cutting across parts of open water that really aren't gonna have wind turbines in them or is there a larger movement offshore that we really don't know enough about? So we just need to understand a little bit better where everybody is and what they're doing. And the shape of the Gulf of Maine, as I showed with the picture of the Gannett movements, it's sort of a bowl and so it's a little easier that there may be a better probability that some species might be more tolerant of crossing that. Nick mentioned flight heights and so understanding the flight heights of the species moving over the Gulf will be really important. You wanna make sure that they're not within where the rotors are moving, basically. As Nick mentioned, most migrating songbirds are migrating thousands of feet above the water and so the likelihood of them being at risk is much lower but it depends on where those turbines are. And one of the things we really don't understand is what sort of weather conditions might push that migration path further down out of the sky and put them at potential risk of being at the height of the rotors. And then if the rotors are in a path where if the bird is moving and wants to stop over on an island or somewhere else that they're not now cutting through that rotor spot area. Again, it's just something that we don't know and we need to understand a little bit better. For bats, we really don't know much about their use of the Gulf of Maine. I think Nick mentioned there is some evidence that they may be cutting across the Gulf depending on the conditions. Again, acoustic surveys through the Gulf of Maine have actually turned up bats just about everywhere, not in high numbers. But they're out there and we need to understand better how many who, why, what are they doing? We need to understand the utilization of the Gulf of Maine by bats. And on shore, we do know that bats can be attracted to wind turbines. And so we don't know if that'll happen offshore if it's going to be an issue at all. Again, we just really need to understand that a little bit better. And like I said with seabirds, we really need to understand the cumulative effects because again, most of these species are moving up and down the coast a couple of times a year. And so we really need to understand that as we get out to full build out of the Eastern seaboard, what sort of impacts that's going to have on some of these populations. So in order to address these gaps, we need to get more data. And I want to be clear here. You could say that you never have enough data forever. But you can get to a point where you feel reasonably comfortable with the amount of data. And we're not quite there yet. And we need to keep gathering data. And we will need to continue to gather data through construction and operation and decommissioning because climate change is happening and sort of moving the goalposts as we go. But we need some good basic information that we can move forward on. And similar to with the seabirds, we want to understand any new technologies that may be out there to help reduce harm, reduce collision potential on the arrays that will go in in the next couple of years and the ones that may be going in 10 years from now. There's a lot of research going on right now to come up with technologies to reduce potential harm to bats and birds. Mitigation collision risk. We need to mitigate collision risk as much as possible. Nick mentioned some of the things like lighting and color and the operation of the turbines themselves. This is something that we've been working on for a long time already. We've got a lot of information from onshore wind. And so we need to apply that in the offshore realm as well, which is something that Bohm is on top of. And then finally, where there are harms that can't be avoided, we need compensation to make sure that we are again making up for any losses that we have because of the offshore wind industry. All right, thank you, Sarah. We'll transition now from above the water to below the water. And we'll talk about what we know about potential impacts to fish and lobster. Maine, of course, is famous for its fisheries. They're the backbone of our coastal economy and of course an important food source for wildlife in the Gulf. In Maine, lobstering is by far the dominant fishery, making up more than 80% of commercial landings. So what does the science say that we know? So one important area of study is EMF, electromagnetic fields. Electromagnetic fields are generated by the movement of electrons, such as through a power line or a transmission cable. And they may be felt to varying degrees of sensitivity by different wildlife under the water. There are low levels of naturally occurring EMF, that's a call, present throughout the oceans. And Maine also has a number of undersea communications and power cables already connecting islands to the shore. Studies of EMF from undersea cables have shown that there's little to no impact on fish or on American lobsters. That's a good thing and indicates that the presence of these cables are unlikely to impact the movement of lobsters overhead. On fisheries themselves, there's been a seven year study of fixed bottom turbines off Block Island in Rhode Island. Found either no impact from turbines or a positive impact on fish schooling around the turbine structures. And again, it's important to remember that those impacts may not translate to the turbines that are in the Gulf, which will be floating and have less undersea structure at the seabed than fixed bottom turbines, although there will be anchors and things. Finally, in last year, the state of Maine enacted a ban on offshore wind development in state waters. That's three nautical miles offshore, which is where approximately 75% of all the lobster fishing occurs. Finally, offshore wind may create areas of refuge for submarine species, increasing local abundance and acting as an attractant. And that may generate sort of spillover effects to increase populations in adjacent areas. And here's the slide on EMF, sorry. Let me turn it over to Sarah now. Thanks, Nick. So as with some of the other species, we really don't know how fish populations in deeper water might be impacted by the presence of turbines. As Nick mentioned with fixed bottom, we've seen, again, with decades of work being done in Europe, that we can end up with artificial reefs, which can actually benefit fish populations. But with floating wind, it's different. We won't have that same structure, although depending on what kind of anchors we use, there may be some hard surfaces that could act as artificial reefs. Again, we really just don't know. And then we don't know how, again, because floating offshore wind is so new, we don't know how fish and benthic organisms will interact with those cables and the anchors. There are a bunch of different kinds of anchors that can be used and they all will have different effects on the substrate on the bottom of the ocean. And so what gets used and how it impacts the local fish populations, we don't quite understand yet. I like this picture actually of the EMF because it shows the idea is that there are these radiating electromagnetic fields coming out of the cables and that includes the cables between the turbines because you have to bring all of the energy together and then the one cable that will go out and bring all of that energy to shore. There's less energy between the turbines and more concentrate higher levels with the cable going out, but there are things that can be done about it. We've got a lot of cables under the water already. You can bury them, you can armor them with rock, you can put concrete mattresses over them. And so there's a lot that can be done to mitigate the potential EMF. And as Nick said, a lot of the research that is either inconclusive or showing really very little to no effect. So that's a really good thing. With floating offshore wind, it depends on whether the inter-turbine cables are buried underground, which we will probably be able to do here in Maine out in California, they may not be able to because we're talking about 1,000 meters deep out there and the cables may actually be in the water column. And as offshore wind develops here in the Gulf of Maine, we don't know what's gonna come with every development. And so we need to just keep an eye on that. Again, we really don't know what the impacts will potentially be. And so what we need to do is again, we need to monitor the impacts of the turbine anchors and cables. We need to understand what impacts they're having on the existing populations that are down there and work with the fishing industry to understand the impacts and to mitigate the potential impacts to the industry and to the ecological functions that raise our fisheries. And then again, we need to make sure where we can't avoid the impacts that we're compensating for the impacts that the offshore wind industry will have on the fish themselves and the fisheries industry as well. All right. Thank you. We are doing well on time, but I'm gonna go, let's keep moving. So because we've got a lot of questions coming up, I can see. And our final category is marine mammals. More than 20 species of marine mammals live in the Gulf of Maine, including harbor seals, gray seals, harbor porpoises, dolphins, and whales, including humpback, fin whale, minky, and the critically endangered northern right whale. What does the science show so far? So a couple of things. Marine mammals can detect and respond to electromagnetic fields, EMF, but there is no evidence of negative impact so far. Marine mammals are also sensitive to underwater noise and some species have displayed altered behavior during the construction of fixed bottom turbines. Fixed bottom turbines are not an option in the Gulf of Maine. And the underwater construction noise of floating turbines is expected to be significantly less than fixed bottom turbines. There will be some amount of noise related to the anchoring of floating turbines, but much less than the sort of pile driving and other construction needed for fixed bottom turbines that exist throughout the rest of the world. Another potential area of impact are the cables which connect the turbines to each other and come to shore. Those turbines are not a entanglement risk. They are too big and too taut to wrap around anything. However, there may be some risk associated with what's called secondary entanglements. Secondary entanglements are where marine debris, such as lost fishing gear, becomes wrapped or caught by those electric cables. And those may have an impact on marine mammals that swim around. Sarah. Thank you, Nick. So again, the things that we don't know is exactly where in the Gulf the marine mammals are in all seasons and how they're using the different habitats and how that could be affected by the turbines. And remember, what's happening with climate change is already affecting this. So the preys species for many of our marine mammals are changing their locations and movement patterns and the predators are following them. And so we need to know what's happening and what could potentially happen in order to understand the potential impacts of offshore wind on marine mammals in the Gulf. Nick mentioned underwater noise. It is going to be dramatically less than for the installation of monopiles or the fixed bottom. They're basically jack hammered into the ocean floor and it's a huge problem. With floating offshore wind, there's going to be very, very little of that kind of noise during construction. There is some noise associated with the actual operation of the turbines, but so far, because again, we've got a lot of wind turbines all around the world already not floating, but fixed bottom. And we haven't seen ill effects from that, but we need to keep an eye on it. As the turbines get bigger, where in the auditory range, the sound is changes as they get bigger. And so we need to just keep an eye on that and make sure we understand what noise is coming out of them and what sort of impact it is having. We also need to think about the changes to the vessel movements. If we have equipment out there that needs regular maintenance, we may have more vessel traffic going from shore out to the turbines and back. So we need to make sure that we're not having an impact because vessel strikes is a huge problem for marine mammals. I was just on a webinar this week where they were talking about the ability to do remote monitoring and really reduce the amount of traffic that you have to have going out to the turbines, which would be a fantastic way to reduce some of the traffic that's out there. And then again, electromagnetic fields, we don't really know what impact it will have once we get to that full build out, essentially. If we do have cables in the water column, what sort of effect that sort of EMF might have on marine mammals as well. And then that question of secondary entanglement that Nick brought up is one that we, again, really don't know a lot about because there isn't a lot of floating offshore wind in the world yet. So we really need to keep an eye on that. There again may be simple fixes for that, such as remote ways to monitor and clean off the cables regularly so that they don't end up collecting a bunch of junk on them that could become secondary entanglement risks. And then finally, just the cumulative impacts of wind farms along the entire Eastern seaboard for a lot of these large mammals that are moving up and down the seaboard, in the Eastern seaboard. So again, we need to continue to study how marine mammals are using the Gulf of Maine. And again, as things are changing with climate change, we really need to not just look back at what was happening 10 and 20 years ago, really understand what's going on now and what could happen in the very near future. Limit acoustic impacts to the greatest extent possible, avoiding construction during breeding and calving seasons. That's sort of a no-brainer, but you still need to sometimes make that a requirement. Keep looking at EMF. Again, it may be that it's not an issue at all. We need to understand that as we're changing things within the industry. Again, identify methods for regularly monitoring and maintaining, cleaning those cables of debris to prevent secondary entanglement. And look at other mitigation methods. If there is a lot of traffic, vessel traffic we may want to require vessel speed restrictions that can dramatically reduce vessel strikes with marine mammals. And then again, compensate for any unavoidable impacts that could in order to make up for any impacts that happen so that we can keep these populations healthy. Thank you, Sarah. I'm gonna turn it now to Eliza to talk about some of the policy opportunities. Great, thanks so much, Nick. And thanks so much to Sarah. I'm really grateful to the biologists and other wildlife experts on our main Audubon team. As we wade into this really present and pressing opportunity, they're helping us stick to our mission. And that is to lead with science, including in our policy work. And as main Audubon's advocacy director, I'm leading on that work to advocate for the adoption of policies that both embrace offshore wind development as a critical component to weaning main and the nation away from fossil fuels and also policies that support responsibly cited in operated offshore wind development. And as Sarah described at the top of the program, a lot of the decision-making related to offshore wind happens at the federal level at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. However, state policymakers also have significant leveraged opportunities. And that biggest one is the state's buying power. It's our purchase of the electricity generated from offshore wind. And that is a big focus of our policy work now and in the coming main legislative session, which is gonna get underway in earnest beginning in January. So like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other states before us, main lawmakers are introducing legislation this session that would direct main utilities to purchase electricity from offshore wind. And also like those states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and others, this policy would set certain standards for that electricity and the offshore wind projects that created, including environmental mitigation standards. Securing these power purchase agreements which are also known as procurements into law is a proven method for signaling to industry that states are ready to embrace offshore wind. And these laws, they set investment wheels in motion so that by the time a state actually goes to buy power, there are offshore wind projects to buy that power from. And again, at the risk of sounding like a broken wheel like many states before us, like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maine Audubon is advocating for baking strong environmental standards into those laws, into those power purchase agreement laws. Specifically, we are asking that offshore wind projects that Maine buys power from have environmental mitigation plans that specifically outline strategies that will be used to avoid and minimize impacts to wildlife. This is the stuff like reducing lighting or regularly cleaning underwater cables, those strategies that Nick and Sarah outlined. We'd also like to see the requirement that projects provide financial and technical support for research and monitoring of wildlife and habitat impacts. You know, we heard again and again that there are a lot of holes in our collective knowledge that we need to fill and offshore wind developers can and should play a big part in filling those holes. In fact, they already are and they should continue to do so. So we can continuously improve how to locate and operate these projects with the least impact to wildlife. And then finally, these policies that Maine can enact should require compensation for those unavoidable impacts. We know that offshore wind is going to negatively impact wildlife. And while we feel very strongly that the benefits of offshore wind far outweigh the drawbacks, we can do best by wildlife if money goes to compensate for those impacts, including money to support conservation efforts, such as conserving seabird colonies or things like that. So that's gonna be a big focus of our advocacy work this session. And I'm really excited about it. I'm also excited that we're collaborating with clean energy advocates and labor advocates on this bill. We think it's a really winning strategy, advocating for clean energy, advocating on behalf of wildlife and the environment, and also advocating that Maine's offshore wind industry support good jobs for Maine people. If you'd like to play a part in advocating for Maine laws that support responsibly cited offshore wind, please sign up for Maine Audubon's Action Network. Maybe Nick or Sarah can drop that in the chat for me, because I'm incapable of doing two- Working on it. Thanks, Nick. After sharing your email address with us, you'll receive periodic messages about opportune times to contact your state representatives about this issue. You'll also hear from us when there are opportunities to advocate on the federal level. And some of those opportunities are coming up really soon. Again, as Sarah described at the top, BOME is in the early stages of identifying areas in the Gulf of Maine where they'll sell leases. And next month, BOME will once again be reaching out to stakeholders and the public to glean information about areas that are a good fit for offshore wind and areas in the Gulf of Maine that aren't a good fit for offshore wind. So please sign up for our action alerts to stay in the loop and I'll kick it back to Nick. Thank you, Eliza. Excellent work. We have time left and we have a lot of questions. So we're gonna dive into them right now. And I'm gonna start with a couple sort of fundamental ones, ones that we probably should have explained in the bulk of the presentation, but we'll get to those first. One of them is from Laura here who asked why is the Gulf of Maine warming faster than the rest of the world? Well, it has to do with currents in the ocean. So the ocean is made up of these basically rivers in the ocean that transport water from one place to another. There are a couple off the coast of Maine. One is a cold water current called the Labrador Current, which if you can picture here sweeping down from the Arctic and past Greenland. For the longest time that current came down and supplied the Gulf of Maine with a lot of cold water. So we had a temperature that was heavily influenced by that Labrador Current. The other current nearby is the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is warmer. It swings down here towards the equator closer south bringing warm water and then circles up off the East Coast of the United States before coming across towards Europe. The Labrador Current and its cold water is weakening as Arctic ice melts and causes to become fresher than it used to be. So the cold water current that used to supply the Gulf is weakening and in its place, the Gulf Stream current is coming closer to the Gulf and supplying the Gulf of the warmer water. There's not a lot of flow in the Gulf and so a lot of that water is just sort of sitting there in a bathtub and that helps explain why the Gulf of Maine is warming so quick, I hope. Thank you. Another fundamental question, I'm not sure where it is who asked it exactly, but how far are we talking? How far offshore in the Gulf of Maine are we talking about for these turbines? Sarah? Yeah, so I mentioned the state's proposed research array and that is being proposed sort of between 20 and 40 miles off the coast. The floating offshore technology that's being developed at humane sort of needs 150 feet but then there's no upper limit and that actually happens fairly quickly in the Gulf of Maine. So it's gonna be, Eliza mentioned the ban on any offshore wind within seawaters, which is three miles but the Gulf of Maine is really quite large and the limitations on how far out it can go really get to be the cost of that cable connection really. The technology is there to, like I said, they've just sold leases off the coast of California and then we're talking about 1,000 meters in depth. And so it's really about that technology is if not ready today, it's definitely on the way that's not something that folks who work in that industry think is gonna be a limitation. It's how expensive it is on the cable all the way out there. And so, but we're talking about many miles from the coast, 10s, 20s, 30 miles and more but it all depends. It depends on what the developers propose and where they propose it. And because they are all of these things that we're talking about, the developers have to look at as well. BOEM is gonna require that. There will be environmental assessments that will happen. And so it's gonna be at least probably 30 meters-ish off shore, but it really depends on what the developers say. Miles. Miles, sorry. Yeah. So we're not talking right up along the shore but we don't have an exact answer for that yet. Thank you. A question here from ER about permitting. I think I'm gonna ask this to Eliza. You know, we have no hopes ER says of meeting our goals if permitting bogs down the process. Where does main Audubon stand on permitting of wind power? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when main Audubon looks at permits we look at them individually. So it's hard to give a broad answer but I will say that we think that there will be better permitting outcomes that there will be better applications for permits if good work is done now to locate these lease areas in places with less potential impact on wildlife and the environment. And that's why these really early stages in engaging with BOM and the federal government on wind energy areas is so important because those permits will encounter less opposition and will have less hurdles if they're for the right locations. So right locations that will have fewer pushback on the permits because you're absolutely right. The potential for these projects to get bogged down as is the case with so many renewable energy projects in litigation is high and that's really too bad. And so it's a challenge on us as environmental advocates to set high standards but also set realistic standards and continuously work towards making sure we're balancing the need to swiftly move towards our renewable energy goals with our other goals related to natural resource protection. Thanks, Eliza. Question here from Peter Lafond. Hey Peter, how will realistic data about the effects of turbines on birds in the Gulf be collected? And I sort of wanna conflate this with another question of his is what is the role of wind companies themselves in the data collection? Yeah, that's actually a great question. And as you can probably imagine there are a lot of different types of surveys that can be done because there isn't one type that gives you all the answers that you need. We have a lot of different species with different movement patterns and a lot of different technologies. So there's everything from actually putting transmitters on the birds in order to track their movements to doing radar surveys, to doing LiDAR and photography surveys using airplanes where they actually and taking photographs and identifying counting the birds that are there. And with the LiDAR you can actually see how high they're flying as well. So that's an added piece. Some of the GPS transmitters now you can get altitude as well. So that can be really important. In terms of the industry role they are often required to collect this information or have gathered enough information to be able to make sure that they're not having a huge environmental impact. Often there will be also funding associated with the development of a project that will go towards some of the research. And this is not just for birds. This is for all of the species that we're talking about. There's a lot of ongoing research upfront that we wanna see happen so that we have the information before the sighting really happens because you can do more with sighting than any kind of mitigation. And so really making sure that we're putting these in the right place is the most critical piece. Thanks. Question from Nicole and Sarah I'm gonna put you back on the spot about cable entanglements and how big these cables actually might be. She said it was stated that cables are too thick for whales to be entangled, how thick? They're like tree trunks. These are big. And for the most part, they're fairly taut. And so the concern that you would have for entanglement is something that's much thinner and really sort of floating around a little bit more. But these really aren't something that it's really, it'd be more of a collision risk potential than that you would get entangled with them. But the potential for them to capture something that is more flexible and thinner is definitely out there because we do have lines and ghost gear out there that could become the problem. Great. Eliza, did you want to answer this question about industries? Sure. And thanks, Nick. I'm figuring out how to use this Q and A. Sorry. No, no, no. Okay, I gotcha. Yeah. Let me pose it to you there from Deborah. She's asked, have industries and politicians shown willingness to address concerns about the impact on these species? Yes, that's a great question. And the answer is yes, so far. And we hope they continue to do so. So as Sarah described earlier, we're really grateful that a lot of folks in the offshore wind industry are really leading the charge on mitigation and monitoring and willingly including sharing data, including monitoring mechanisms in their projects, et cetera. As for politicians, as I talked about, we've already seen in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, those are the ones that come to mind right now that state lawmakers are including environmental mitigation standards in their laws related to offshore wind. So that's great on the state level. And at the federal level, we're seeing leadership in also funding to research these impacts, to understand these impacts. And in our interactions with BOEM, this is understanding, right-siting these projects is of high interest to them. I think that gets back to the question earlier about permitting. BOEM wants this to be successful and offshore wind is going to be successful if impacts are limited. And so they are keenly taking in, are keenly interested in taking in as much information as possible so that they can put these projects in the best location. I think I also saw a question in the chat about eBird data, about data from whale watching groups, et cetera. Those are all fair game. And I would encourage the folks who put those questions in the question and answer box to be in touch with us and we can share with you when there will be opportunities to share that information with BOEM because they're in the information gathering stage when it comes to the Gulf of Maine and all information is fair game right now. The good folks at Bar Harbor Whale Watch. And I wanted to say, Julie who wrote one of those questions said that they have seen a significant change, shift in distribution between in other baleen whales in Down East Maine, fin whales, humpbacks. So folks who are out on the water frequently are seeing those changes happen. It's after one. So I want to go quickly and we have questions left that we're not gonna get to. I apologize. Invite you please to email me at Maine Audubon if you have additional questions that we didn't get to. Let me put that right down there. Audubon.org. If Eliza and Sarah, if you wanna look at the question and see if there's any that you wanna tackle maybe as a last one, I can answer Bill's question about whether blue crab is a viable catch in the Gulf of Maine. Not now, but it might be someday. Blue crab is of course a famous, it's sort of the lobster of the Chesapeake, I guess you could say. We do know that species are moving, Southern species are moving into the Gulf of Maine, black sea bass, some seahorses, et cetera, as the water warms and becomes sort of of a temperature that Southern species are used to, they can move right up in the Gulf of Maine. And so someday folks in the Gulf of Maine may be catching different fish as part of a sort of commercial landings than we have now. Sarah. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I put a shout out for some of the other organizations that we're working with so that it doesn't seem like Maine has to figure out all of this on our own. There is a regional wildlife science collaborative and the state is working with them to develop some maps of where the data show these organisms are to collect all the data that exists and identify where the data gaps are and how to collect the data they need. They've been doing this with a lot of the states on the Eastern seaboard, so they're well-versed in this. They have some fantastic scientists as part of the group. And so we pay attention to what's going on over there. And also there's a wildlife and offshore wind group, I think that's funded by Duke University and that's where the experts from all over the country come together and talk about the different issues that are coming up and we sit in with that group and they'll have speakers on the latest research that's happening out there. So we're not having to reinvent that wheel. We're all actually collaborating across the board, across the country actually with other environmental groups and scientists. Okay. Well, there are questions left that we're not gonna get to. We all gotta go shovel, I guess, or something, but I do wanna say thank you so much to all of you who joined, this was great. And I just want you to know that we will respond to any other questions that you wanna send to us. And we're working hard out here to seize this opportunity to protect Maine's wildlife, to reduce the impacts of fossil fuels and do it in a way that protects as much wildlife as possible. So thanks everyone for coming. Have a great weekend, have a safe and warm weekend and take care.