 All righty, it looks like we have a good group coming in, so I'm gonna get us started. We have a lot to talk about today. So good morning, everyone. My name is Hannah Fuller. I'm a media officer with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Thank you for joining us this morning for a webinar on the report released last week, titled Evaluating Impacts of Offshore Wind, Energy on the Intucket Shoals Region Ecosystems, Hydrodynamics, and Whales. You can download a copy of the report and other supporting materials at www.nap.edu. A recording of this webinar will be available in the coming weeks on the National Academies website. For those of you not familiar with the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we are private nonprofit institutions that provide independent objective analysis and advice to the US to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. For each requested study, panel members are chosen for their expertise and experience and serve pro bono to carry out the study's statement of task. The reports that result from the study represent the consensus view of the committee and must undergo external peer review before they are released, as did this report. We have members of the committee with us here today to discuss the report. Before I turn it over to them, I wanna go over a few reminders. Please note that this webinar is scheduled to last one hour. We'll start off with a presentation summarizing the report and then we'll open it up to any questions you may have. To ask a question, simply click Q&A at the bottom of your Zoom screen and type in your question. You can submit a question at any time during the presentation and we'll get to as many as we can at the end. Now I'd like to introduce the members of the committee that wrote the report who will be speaking with us today. First off, Eileen Hoffman is the chair of the committee that wrote the report and is a professor and eminent scholar in the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences and a member of the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography both at Old Dominion University. Jeff Carpenter is a physical oceanographer at the Institute for Coastal Ocean Dynamics at the Hemholtz Zentrum Herion in Gestalt, Germany. Jim Chen is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern University. Josh Kohut is a professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. Richard Merrick is an independent marine scientist and former chief science advisor for NOAA Fisheries. Erin Meyer Gutfrod is an assistant professor in the School of the Ocean, Earth, Ocean and Environment at the University of South Carolina. Douglas Noakek is a professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and Kaus Rugu Kumar is a consultant in marine sciences at Integral Consulting, Incorporated and International Environmental Sciences and Engineering Company. So we've got a great group of experts with us today and I will pass it off to Eileen. Take it away. Okay. Thank you, Hannah, for the introduction. And it is my pleasure to welcome you to this public briefing for the report, Potential Hydrodynamic Impacts of Offshore Wind Development on Nantucket Region Ecology and Evaluation from Wind to Wales. The objective of this briefing is to provide an overview of the study that was done to develop this report and present key recommendations from the report. We should have 20 to 30 minutes at the end of the presentation for questions and discussion. As you just heard, I am joined by several of the committee members for the presentation and we will welcome your questions at this time. The committee members who are unable to join send their regrets as that they had conflicting obligations. So I'll start with some background on the region of interest. This slide shows the Nantucket Shoals Region located to the Southwest of Cape Cod. Also shown on the slide is the outline of the proposed wind energy lease areas that are planned for installation on this part of the U.S. Continental Shelf. The colors represent different wind energy projects. This area represents the first large-scale offshore wind farm development in U.S. coastal waters. Not shown here, but most important to the study is that this is also an area where the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale is found during the winter to spring months. And ensuring environmentally responsible development and operation of offshore wind in this region is the real motivation for this study. So the committee was given a statement of tasks that is shown on this slide. The first task is to assess the state of the science on the effects of offshore wind turbines on hydrodynamic processes and the scale of change from the structures relative to that of natural variability. This first task is based on information available in the literature, that is peer-reviewed scientific report articles and in reports provided in support of developing offshore wind energy. The second task is to use the literature review and information from public gathering sessions to comment on the ability to estimate the extent of perturbations from offshore wind energy structures on the oceanography with emphasis on ecosystem impacts that might affect availability of prey for the North Atlantic right whale. In other words, can the effects be observed? The committee was then asked to evaluate the applicability of models used by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in environmental impact analyses and studies of wind energy areas in the Nantucket-Scholes region. So this task asks, can the effects be modeled and simulated? And finally, the committee was asked to suggest approaches for assessing the hydrodynamic impacts of offshore wind energy structures. Okay, so who took on these tasks? Well, as you heard in Hannah's introduction, we have quite a nice committee here. The committee members are shown on the slide. And as Hannah mentioned, the committee expertise includes observations and modeling of hydrodynamic processes, atmospheric dynamics, marine mammal ecology and population dynamics, zooplankton population ecology and dynamics, and ecological modeling. The committee also includes expertise from wind farms installed in European waters. All right, and as already mentioned, several of the committee members are participating in this briefing and are available to answer questions at the end. So how is the study done? Well, BOM, the study sponsor, provided a one-year contract to the National Academies that started in March of this year. The National Academy staff organized the committee you saw on the previous slide and work on the statement of tasks began in April with planning for a public workshop to gather information. The workshop took place in June. There were other in-person meetings of the committee as well as virtual meetings to discuss conclusions, recommendations, and to write the report. The report was sent for external review in early August, which is less than three months after the first workshop. The committee then responded to the reviewers' comments which were helpful and insightful. And the result is a peer-reviewed consensus study that was done in about six months. So along with the report, the committee has developed a short highlights document and a one-page summary of the report. And also several conference and meeting presentations are scheduled in the next four to five months. And the first will happen at the end of this month at the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium annual meeting in Halifax. So I'm gonna start by providing a summary of the conclusions from the study. I will then describe the process for reaching these conclusions in addition to providing the committee's recommendation to BOM, NOAA, and others to fill important data and knowledge gaps. So the first conclusion is that the significant natural and anthropogenic variability in the Nantucket-Scholes region suggests that perturbations to the hydrodynamics from wind farm development are likely to be difficult to isolate and the effects on zooplankton are likely to be difficult to distinguish. The second conclusion is that significant uncertainties exist in assessing hydrodynamic impacts associated with wind and ocean waves at local wind farm and regional scales. Uncertainties exist in assessing the abundance and aggregation of zooplankton prey like Kalanus and Narchicus. And uncertainties exist in assessing current and future foraging patterns of North Atlantic Right Whales. All right, so now we'll look at the report that gives the information that supports the conclusions and recommendations from this study. The report is structured around four chapters. Chapter one provides information about the statement of task in the committee and we've already talked about that. Chapters two, three, and four consider the oceanography and ecology of the Nantucket-Scholes region, hydrodynamic impacts of wind farm development, and ecological impacts of wind farm development. So I'll first start with describing the oceanographic regime. All right, as shown in this summary schematic, the hydrodynamics of the Nantucket-Scholes region are driven by complex interactions among shelf break processes, seasonal stratification, bottom friction, tides, and flows over complex bathymetry. The complex oceanography is additionally influenced by region-specific... Oh, what happened there? Excuse me. By region-specific processes such as long-term surface densification, onshore midwater intrusions of slope water, warm core rings, onshore displacement of the shelf break front, and inner annual and inner decadal variability in the circulation. So a clear result from the literature is that major oceanographic changes have occurred in the region since 2000 and certainly since 2010. These changes include warming of surface and bottom water temperatures, increased frequency of Gulfstream warm core rings, and midwater intrusions into the tidally mixed inshore region. Warming water temperature affects the onset decay and intensity of seasonal stratification, and these changes affect the oceanography of the region, but the long-term trends and consequences remain to be determined, particularly because the system is continuously evolving, and that's an important point to keep in mind is that this system is evolving in response to all of these different forcings on it. As shown at the bottom of the schematic, the changes in the oceanography can produce ecosystem responses. All right, chapter two of the report also summarizes information about the biological oceanography of the Nantucket-Scholls region with the main focus being on zooplankton and whales. The North Atlantic right whale shown on this slide in interactions with its prey are the focus for the biological oceanography portion of the report. All right, and this is because the Nantucket-Scholls region is an important foraging region for right whales during winter and spring when they migrate to the area. Right whales feed on small, energy-rich zooplankton and in particular copepods, such as Kalanus fin Marchicus, and the life cycle of Kalanus fin Marchicus is shown in the lower part of this slide. The older copipated stages like the C5 stage and adults are the target prey for right whales. All right, successful foraging depends on the copepod prey being found in sufficient densities and at appropriate depths. This makes a right whale sensitive to disturbances in their prey in the water column. So chapter three of the report provides an assessment of the hydrodynamic impacts that is based on observational and modeling studies. So how is the assessment done? The committee framed its assessment of both the hydrodynamic and ecological effects in chapters three and four around the three scales shown on this slide that represent effects at the wind turbine scale, wind farm scale, and regional scale. The spatial range included in the different scales is shown below each panel here. So what types of effects on the hydrodynamics were considered? Well, this is illustrated using the wind turbine scale figure that is shown here. We first thought about atmospheric effects. As the wind blows across a turbine or a wind farm, wind energy is extracted, creating a wind wake downstream of the turbine with reduced wind speed. This effect is expected at the wind farm scale, but it can be larger depending on atmospheric conditions. In the ocean, the turbine structure in the water column causes an ocean wake, meaning that the water becomes more turbulent downstream of the turbine, which is illustrated by the increased number of swirls in the figure. And this effect carries over to the wind farm scale. Increased turbulence and decreased wind forcing both affect the structure and the movement of the water as it passes the turbine. Significant uncertainties exist in understanding these effects. The knowledge we have is limited and primarily based on a few observation and modeling studies done for wind farms in the North Sea. The North Sea modeling studies at the wind farm scale have not been generally validated with observations. And there's only one study with transects of stratification across wind farms. And these observations seem to agree with an idealized modeling study. The structure and magnitude of the wind wake at the sea surface is poorly understood, with most observational modeling studies focused on wind speed reductions at hub height of the turbine and not at the sea surface. The effect of ocean surface roughness on wind stress reductions at the sea surface is also poorly understood. So what is the state of being able to estimate the perturbations from wind turbines and wind farms on the hydrodynamic regime? Well, as shown on this slide, at the turbine scale, there are a few observations that can be used to look at wake behavior. But the key thing here is that there are few. The potential effects at the wind farm scale shown on this slide are mostly from limited modeling studies and are not generally grounded in observations. There's only one study with a qualitative comparison to observations. Hydrodynamic effects at the regional scale are difficult to quantify because of the natural variability. So then the committee also considered the hydrodynamic models that are available for assessing effects at the three scales in the Nantaka-Scholes region. This table from our report summarizes the results in terms of model capability that is needed to assess effects at different scales. Idealized models shown here with the blue dots can be applied to assess key processes at the various scales. The large eddy simulation, non-hydrostatic models, and the Reynolds average Navier-Stokes equation models can support predictions, but at different scales. The conclusion from this assessment is that a range of models that resolve the appropriate scales are needed to address questions about the effects of wind turbines and wind farms on hydrodynamic processes. So this leads us now to our first conclusion which is related to observational studies and shown on this slide here. So the first recommendation, rather, observational studies that target processes at the relevant turbine to wind farm scales are needed to isolate, quantify, and characterize hydrodynamic effects. The committee recommends that BOM, NOAA, and others should promote and require where possible these observational studies at all phases of wind energy development, that is surveying, construction, operation, and decommissioning. We also note that the existing wind farms provide opportunities for case studies. The second recommendation shown on this slide focuses on hydrodynamic modeling studies. BOM, NOAA, and others should require model validation studies to determine the capability and appropriateness of a particular model to simulate key baseline hydrodynamic processes relevant at the turbine, wind farm, and or regional scales. In addition, these studies should evaluate the ability of the model to represent the physical complexity which was shown on the previous slide, evaluate model sensitivity, quantify uncertainty, and evaluate model performance. The last bullet here recommends making the model parameterizations, configurations, and solutions publicly available. And this recommendation comes from the experiences of the ocean and climate communities that show more progress is made more rapidly when a diverse community is involved in model development, implementation, and analysis. Okay, so now we turn to the ecological impacts that are summarized in chapter four of our report. This schematic provides a summary of potential ecological effects. Phytoplankton productivity is primarily controlled by water column stratification and solar radiation. Zooplankton forage on the phytoplankton that comes, that is produced in seasonal blooms and most higher trophic level species associated with the nantical shoals region feed either directly or indirectly on the zooplankton found in the region. As already mentioned, the high concentrations of zooplankton, including Kalmasfin marchicus, the primary prey of right whales, may account for the great numbers of right whales observed feeding in the Nantucket shoals region and other areas of high productivity in southern New England waters. I should mention that Kalmasfin marchicus is more likely to be effected into the Nantucket shoals region area rather than being locally produced, which places emphasis on the circulation. Also, right whales are probably eating other smaller zooplankton as well and chapter two of the report provides a figure showing what these other potential prey items might be. The concern is the potential for the wind turbines in wind farms to disrupt the abundance and aggregation of the zooplankton, which in turn could disrupt right whale foraging patterns. This figure illustrates the connectivity between the hydrodynamics and Kalmas. The important message is that Kalmas is affected by hydrodynamic processes at a range of scales. An implication is that perturbation to the hydrodynamics by wind turbines and wind farms have the potential to potentially disrupt zooplankton availability to the North Atlantic right whale. The paucity of observations and significant natural variability and uncertainty in the modeled hydrodynamic effects of wind energy development at the turbine, wind farm and regional scales make potential ecological impacts of the turbines difficult to predict and or detect. So what about the effect on the right whale? A summary of the ability to assess these impact impacts is provided on this slide. Hydrodynamics on zooplankton prey are difficult to assess as shown in the previous slides. We lack understanding of foraging by right whales in the Nantucket-Scholes region and studies at a wind farm scale do not adequately capture the right whales broad use of the Nantucket-Scholes region because right whale foraging decisions also depend on the availability or not of prey resources in distant habitats. So this brings us to our third recommendation that deals with oceanographic and ecological observations. And the committee's recommendation is that BOM, NOAA and others should require collection of oceanographic and ecological observations through a robust integrated monitoring program before and during all phases of wind energy development that is surveying, construction, operation and decommissioning. This is especially important is right whale use of the Nantucket-Scholes region continues to evolve due to oceanographic changes and or the activities and conditions relevant to offshore wind turbines. The related recommendation for oceanographic and ecological modeling is shown here. And again, while wind energy planning and development progresses, BOM, NOAA and others should require oceanographic and ecological modeling before and during all phases of wind energy development that is surveying, construction, operation and decommissioning. And this critical information will help guide regional policies that protect right whales and improve predictions of ecological impacts from wind development at other lease sites. So the key takeaway messages from our report are summarized on this slide. The first deals with uncertainties which can be significant that are associated with identifying impacts of wind turbines and wind farms on the hydrodynamics, abundance and aggregation of zooplankton and current and future foraging patterns of right whales. The second message relates to the scale of perturbations from wind turbines and wind farms relative to the scale of natural and anthropogenic variability. Perturbations from wind turbines and wind farms may be difficult to isolate from these significant sources of natural variability. And the third takeaway message here is development of offshore wind should include coordinated regional programs to understand and identify hydrodynamic and ecological effects at turbine and wind farm scales and modeling studies that capture the physical and ecological complexity of the region. So this brings me to our acknowledgments here because there are many people to thank for the support of the study and the report. We thank our sponsor, Bohm. We thank the many volunteers listed on this slide for generously providing their time and expertise that underpinned much of our report. We thank the peer reviewers and report review committee for their insightful and critically constructive comments that greatly improved the report. We thank Kelly Oskar, our study director and Safa Wine for their support and guidance that made the report a reality. And finally, I wanna thank you for your attention. If you have questions, we'll try to answer them now. And the link at the bottom of the slide, the very long link there will take you to more detailed information about the study and processes used for the study. So I'll stop at that point. And again, thank you for your attention and we'll move into... Great, thank you so much, Jailene. I'm gonna get us started with our first question and like Kelly put in the chat, if you have any questions, definitely let us know and we'll try to get to as many as we can. Our first question is, do the potential effects on the North Atlantic right whale weren't pausing for their development in the region? No, I think as said here, the area, there is significant uncertainty in how, what the perturbations will be and in how the right whales are using the area. But I think what I'll do is I'll ask our right whale experts on the committee, Erin and Doug and Richard if they would like to expand on that. So please go ahead. Thanks, Aileen. I'll start with saying that that's not, that question is not something that our committee was tasked with answering directly. So the progress of offshore wind is a big question and it should take into account a lot of things that are far beyond what our committee assessed. But what we can say with some certainty is that climate-driven shifts in zooplankton abundance have really dramatically impacted right whale foraging in this region and in other regions that have these sort of distant impacts and how they're using this space. So at this point, I don't think there's reason to believe that impacts from offshore wind will occur at the same scale, but it's absolutely, it's understudied. We obviously don't have observations and we don't have models that are capable of answering that question. So this is a great opportunity to dig into this, this kind of process and better understand the hydrodynamic implications of turbines on zooplankton and thus their predators. And then Richard or Doug, do you wanna add to that, please? Yeah, well, Erin covered it very well. Thanks, Erin. The only thing I thought to add is that with this recommendation and the progress of building out the first wind farms, which are happening now, of course, is our opportunity to make those measurements, Erin said, and allow us to apply those to future developments, including the idea of having multiple wind farms in the same area. So we're really, there'll be great measurements to have. That's all I wanted to add. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Yes, Richard, please. And I think we tend to underestimate what the impact of the changing ocean environment has had on the ecosystems in southern New England. It's clear for those species that we do monitor, like many of the commercial fish species and shellfish species, that has been dramatic changes that have occurred since 2000, particularly since 2010. And we've seen a total collapse of the lobster population and appears in the southern New England, the Mid-Atlantic, that the scalp stocks are declining. All that is caused by the changing ocean conditions, which are also affecting zooplankton, which many of those species would be feeding on. Okay, any other questions? Yeah, okay. All right, our next question is, with the projects that are already in progress in the region, how should these recommendations be implemented? That's a hard one. But I think that's a good question, actually. So we did not provide guidance on how to implement our recommendations, but our recommendations do suggest that the existing wind farms could be used as sites to try to develop some of the monitoring and measurement programs that could be used to assess impacts. But I'll ask other committee members if they'd like to expand on that. Yeah, please go ahead, Erin. Yeah, it's a bit of a reiteration of what I just said, but this is a really important opportunity to conduct observations, so sampling, and then also modeling studies. And there's a lot of recommendations in the report about how to think about that. But especially sort of thinking about those three scales, observations and modeling that look at that turbine scale, at the wind farm scale, and the regional scale. And I wanna put in a quick plug for regional monitoring programs that exist and that have run for a long time. We're talking about in the order of decades. And these monitoring programs have been essential for all of our understanding of oceanography and ecology in the region. So those need to continue. They're not always well supported, so they need to continue being well supported, but we have to add in some sort of high resolution observations and modeling to think about those smaller scales. Right, okay, thank you. Any other comments? Okay. I'll take us to our next question then. Our next question is, if the effects are going to be masked by large signals of climate change, why should funding be allocated to support additional studies and observations? Well, I think the modeling and observation studies that mostly underpinned our report were done in European waters. All right, so we don't have the equivalent modeling and observation studies for the Nantucket Shoals region area. So it's gonna be, it's an ongoing process to look at, to develop the monitoring, as Erin just talked about, and observations that will provide guidance on what the impacts will be. But I think, are there other committee members that would like to comment on that? Yes, Josh, please go ahead. Thank you, Eileen. I think it's a good question. And the point that I would raise, and what we speak about in the report is that there's an existing wealth of research that's been done in the peer reviewed literature on natural and climate scale variability of the region. And I'm speaking right now wearing my physical oceanography hat. And so that was a pretty rich set of literature that we could review as we went in this. So we have some good information on that baseline. What's lacking is specific studies to this area when we look at a wind turbine effect. Most of the research that's happened has been based on modeling studies that don't have a lot of observations to support those models. And so, it's important for us to understand what the scale of impact might be from those models, but make sure we keep it in context with what we do understand pretty well, which is the scale of the natural anthropogenic change. Yeah, thank you. Any other comment from anyone? Okay, yes, Erin, please go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to add that right whale foraging behavior is really tricky to understand and it's non-linear. So it seems like there's probably a certain threshold of density that that zooplankton must aggregate in for it to be worthwhile for the whale to forage in that area. So changes that could potentially be of small magnitude can have impacts that are hard to sort of suss out. And that's why these kinds of modeling and observational studies are really important. And we have to think on a broader scale, not just in the Nantucket-Scholes region because their choice to use this habitat could actually be based off of something that's happening in Cape Cod Bay or the Bay of Fundy or even the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Yeah, okay, thank you. Thank you. Our next question is in the report, there are three hydrodynamic models called out in the committee's statement of task. What would you say is the best for modeling hydrodynamics in the Nantucket-Scholes? Okay, so what we point to in our report is that what is needed is a range of models and models that will be able to resolve the appropriate scales for the turbine scale, the wind farm scale, and the regional scale. And that's summarized in the table, that little table with the different color dots in it. But I think that's the, it really is a matter of the scale that the model is looking at. But I'm going to ask Jim and Jeff and Kaus, who are the modeling people involved in our committee, if they could respond to that question. Yeah, I'm Jim Cheng, yeah. So as Alisa said that we, the committee looked at all models available in the literature and our disposals, but also the three models that in the task bore one us to examine. So we actually, in the report in table one we listed all the characteristics of the models and compare with the reference model and try to show that what's the advantage and disadvantage of each model. And it turns out to be there are the fundamental theories and numerical discretization are quite similar, although they are not identical, but one key difference is how you primitize the small scale effect of the turbine. That's why we look at other LES model, large eddy simulation modeling and idealized models to show that so well you need to take the approach that are corresponding to question related to individuals, the specific scale that you want to answer. So we don't say which model is the best to me now is the well, why is the model approach, the model itself, but also how the understanding of the processes in this region. And maybe my colleagues can also add their comments. Yeah, I think Jim's said it best actually. I just maybe we'll quickly add that if you really want to address questions at these different scales, then you do really need a different types of models to do that. And there are existing specialized models to actually go into these different scales and resolve the relevant processes. And when you scale up to regional scales, which is a lot of the time what is needed to assess the impacts of these farms, then you really need to get the smaller scales implemented and validated in the models. All right, our next question is, can you comment on the difference in scale between the known impact of climate change and the potential impact of wind turbines? That's sort of the basis of our report. But climate signals we know are happening, I think it's already been mentioned. The Nantucket-Scholes area is really undergoing changes and it's evolving. I don't know that we can say that a given number or a quantitative answer of the scale of a turbine relative to that, but we think the scale is likely to be small or the response, and that's in several of the conclusions in our report. But I'll ask other committee members if they would like to try to expand on that. Yeah, I think it just, from the physical side, I think it's what we've said is that it's important to think of things in context and understand that there is significant variability that happens on multiple scales. I encourage the audience, there's quite a few resources for data and analysis of data in the literature that helps us scale that variability over a variety of time scales from events all the way up to climate and multi-decadal scales. And so the report and the consensus of the committee was to make sure that that context is considered when assessing these impacts. Right, yeah, that's a good point. It's the context of the impact, yeah. Right, okay. We, our next question is, do you think that on-site monitoring and use of digital twins for different scenarios would help in impact analysis? Yeah, I mean, that's a very good question. We were not tasked with actually saying what would be used to assess the impact at this level of being this specific. But you know, that would be, yeah. I mean, that would be a useful way to do this, I think, yeah. For looking at impact analysis, yeah. I don't know if anybody else wants to say anything to that, but we do recommend that there be monitoring at the level of wind farms and the individual turbines in order to assess the effect. So, yeah. Yeah, Richard, please go ahead. Yeah, I mean, just to sort of repeat your message, we had consciously chosen not to try to design a monitoring program. We know that there are efforts right now but within NOAA and within other groups to design such a program. And we wanted to stay out of it, other than just to say that it's really needed a regional coordinated monitoring program. And because you need to be able to verify these model results and you're not gonna be able to do it without a good monitoring program. Right, yeah, that's true. And that is a strong recommendation that we have made. We're both the hydrodynamics and the ecology is the need for integrated coordinated monitoring efforts. Yeah, yes, Cows, please go ahead. Yeah, I'll add that, you know, as the committee has recommended, there's various models on various scales that need to be validated from the fine scale to the regional scale. And specific site monitoring efforts could help validate the variety of models on the smaller scales for sure. So I think it's a really important component that needs to be considered. Yeah, yeah. Great, thank you all. Our next question is, can you specifically mention which phases of development the study focused on or is the study focusing on the effects after the development of the wind turbines? Okay, so the study recommendations focus on things that focus on hydrodynamic and ecological effects that occur through all phases of offshore wind energy development. That's from the planning, the surveying, the development, the installation, and even through decommissioning. So we have not picked out, if I understand the question correctly, we are not saying the information we have available to us from the European studies is after the wind farms have been established. But what we're saying is that we need, for recommendation is that we would recommend programs that start at the very beginning of the planning and the development and goes through the whole life cycle of the wind energy development. And I don't think that's been done anywhere, but perhaps other people can expand on that. Yeah. Yes, Kaus, please go ahead. Oh, sorry, I forgot to lower my hand. Okay, all right. All right, Jeff. Yeah, I can maybe quickly comment on the European perspective and that is that I think very little work on the hydrodynamic side has been done before the development of the farms. And we just happened to have some data that was collected by accident through some of these farm sites before they were built. And it's been extremely useful in trying to assess some of the changes and how you can disentangle them from the natural variability. So this is something that's been found to be really important actually for the hydrodynamics. Yeah. Thank you. Our next question is, what is the distance from the turbine that you anticipate potential effects? How far away would a turbine need to be to have minimal or no effect? Okay, so we don't have any numbers in our report that would address something like that. What we can do is point to some modeling studies and some observations that have been done for European waters. And when farms in European waters, that might provide some guidance on this. But we can't really give a number. The other thing is the natural state of the system, the physical oceanography, the stratification. As we talked about in the presentation, there are a lot of physical processes that go on that vary seasonally and interannually. And that's gonna have an effect on the impact. But I'll hand this off to Jeff or Josh, perhaps to maybe expand on that, but not maybe. Yeah, I can just add that the conditions that dictate the distance and effect might go are dependent on atmospheric and ocean setup. So if you have different marine layer characteristics, it may drive the wakes. I think one of the important things that the committee considered, and we got some great input from the community on this, is when you think about the wake effect, thinking about the wake effect at the ocean surface, not at the hub height. And so understanding how that extraction of energy at hub height is actually manifested down at the surface of the ocean. And as we say in the report, many of the results relevant to this question are based on modeling studies that are not grounded in a lot of observations. And so the result is quite ranging. The reason why we couldn't put a number in wasn't because we didn't want to, but the scientific literature did not really afford us the opportunity to put a number because the results were quite widely ranged. And so it stresses the importance of our recommendation to have grounding and observations to understand how we might quantify the length scale of that effect. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yes, Jeff, please. Yeah, I think also it's important to keep in mind that there's gonna be a range of scales that are always present with the variability in them due to both the atmospheric alterations as well as the oceanic ones. So it's not just a simple matter of there's an optimal scale or I think you really have to think in terms of a spectrum of different scales. All right, yeah, thank you. And Doug, please, yeah. Yeah, just briefly to support those things. I think that it's also quite evident in the report that it's the larger scale that we think is really highly impacted by the climatic changes. And so even changes induced by the turbines at those scales is gonna be undetectable. Yeah, thank you. So our next question is, were impacts of individual wind farms evaluated at multiple scales or were multiple adjacent wind farms like we see in southern England evaluated by the committee? All right, so our evaluation was based on the three scales I showed in the report. All right, and one could argue that the large area of adjacent wind farms is really just a big wind farm scale that we used in the report. But I think, yeah, we weren't looking at, if I understand this, individual wind farms at multiple scales, we were just looking at the effects at our three basic scales, which was the turbine, the wind farm scale and a regional scale. But perhaps someone else can provide a more satisfactory answer to that question. Yeah, go ahead, Josh, please. I don't wanna presume it'll be more satisfactory. I mean, I thought you gave a good answer there. But the one thing I'll say is that it was clear to the committee when we were starting to look at the literature and hear from some of the presentations that we had in our public meetings, the importance to factor or to categorize our analysis within different scales that you couldn't look at this. And I think Jeff just hit on it really well on the prior answer about the spectrum of scales. I like that term, Jeff. I'm gonna use that. But so our intention here was to think about the order one categories of scale, which is an individual turbine, a collection of turbines which we frame out as a wind energy area. The wind energy area to Eileen's point could be one project or multiple adjacent projects, but it's a collection of turbines. And then there's the larger regional scale which is beyond the scale of development and considering that. So we didn't get into the specifics of what turbines or what spacing or anything like that, but it was just more a way for us to take an order one because the modeling tools, the literature all could be categorized into those broad scales and help us in our analysis and recommendations. Yeah, thank you. Much more coherent answer, thank you. Great, our next question is, can the committee discuss the difference between water depths in the EU and that of the Shoal? Does deeper water mitigate the potential impacts? Okay, I think I'll ask maybe Jeff if you wanna potentially answer that and others can add to that. I think if you don't mind. Okay, I can maybe make just a couple of comments on that. I don't know how well I can do, but I think one thing that you have to keep in mind with deeper water is that as you go into deeper water, you have, you usually have less of an influence of bottom friction and tidal friction on the stratification. So you're likely to find stronger stratification in deeper water. That's certainly the case in European waters. And so the impacts on stratification are also likely to be less on average. But it depends a little bit, I think on how you measure that. I'm talking more specifically about the direct ocean wakes rather than the atmospheric impacts. In terms of the atmospheric impacts, well, maybe Carlos can do this, but I think that the deep water shouldn't have such a big effect on, say, the displacement of the thermal plants that you would see. Yeah, anyone else wanna comment on this? Yeah, I think just briefly, I think it's directly to the question about the chain, the differences in depth between the North Sea and the other EU areas in the shoal. It's important folks to understand that for the fixed foundations, which is what we're discussing, all of them occur in 60 meters or less of water. Once it gets more than that, it moves to floating winds turbines which have a different structure to them. But I think we're just looking at 60 meters and less. Yeah, that's a good point, thank you. Yeah, yes, go ahead, Richard, please. And keep in mind that none of this was actually on the shoal. This is actually in the deeper water to the west of Nantika shoals. Yeah, good point, thank you. Okay. Thank you all. And we just have a few more minutes left here today. So I wanna invite the committee members that were able to join us today to offer anything that they would wanna highlight that hasn't been addressed yet. The report was just released on Friday morning so folks haven't maybe had a chance to read the whole thing. And so if there's anything that you would like to make sure that people know about as they begin to dig deeper into the report. Okay, so Richard, do you have your hand up to? Yeah, just one real quick comment and this goes back to what Erin was saying earlier that most of these projects are focused on monitoring the impact of actually building it. There is not a lot of emphasis on monitoring afterwards. And I think implicitly much of our concern here is the long-term effect of what these turbines could be doing to the hydrodynamics of the Nantika shoals region. So that argues for a long-term monitoring program beyond the actual construction. That's where, for these for right whales and most of the other species that live there, that's where the effects are gonna occur. Thank you. Yeah, very good point, thank you. Yes, Erin. I'll just add to that a little bit. I've seen some recommendations that monitoring around turbines go on for something like three years after construction. And right whale habitat use is variable on annual and even decadal timescales and that's really well-documented. So the way that right whales may be using the Nantika shoals region or not can be completely different from how they're using it five, 10, 15 years down the line. So just think about that. It's not just about how the dynamics are happening in the water around the turbine itself, but it's also how right whales and their use of other foraging habitats is impacting their need or not to use this Nantika shoals region. So long-term monitoring from the higher trophic level perspective is really important. Comfort. Good. Yeah, Josh and then Doug, yeah. Yeah, I'll just say real briefly. I hope that what comes across in the report is that there is a rich set of knowledge of the hydrodynamics of this region and other regions that are being considered for offshore wind development. I encourage everyone to review Glenn Gorkowitz's presentation that was made to the committee. Really nice job of summarizing. It's based on a lot of peer-reviewed science, peer-reviewed data, and that it's important as we think about impacts that as the report recommends that we consider monitoring and research studies that really try and isolate that impact amidst all that we already know about the hydrodynamics. And so I hope that that's a message that comes from the report. Right, thank you. And Doug, maybe you're the last comment here. Oh boy, that's dangerous. Thanks, Eileen. I just wanted to reiterate something you did cover nicely in the presentation, but there's so much in there that I just wanted to reiterate. And that is that the importance for people to understand that this zooplankton population that the right whales may be feeding on is not created on the shoals or in that area. It is effected in from the larger Gulf of Maine and North Atlantic. And I would point everyone to Andy Pershing's presentation to the committee to explore that. And the supply of copepods is really the important part in out the production. Thanks. Right, it's a good point. And thank you for bringing that up again. Maybe Jeff, you can be the last comment here, please. It's not a scientific one, actually. It's more of an administrative one. There's a lot of questions in the chat that we didn't get to. I was just wondering what we do about those since we're out of time, I think. Yeah, so thanks, Jeff. Yeah, we definitely did not have enough time for how many questions there are. Kelly Oste, who was the study director for this study, has dropped her email in the chat for everyone. So if you have further questions about the study today or in the coming weeks and months, we encourage you to reach out to Kelly and she can direct those questions to the appropriate expert as they come in. So thank you for the administrative question, Jeff. And yeah, like Alina has said, we're at the end of our time. So I wanna thank all of our committee members for their time volunteering to write the report as well as today for joining us on this webinar. I also wanna thank all of you for joining us and all of your fantastic questions. As I mentioned in my introduction, a recording of this webinar will be available in the coming weeks on the National Academies webpage. And as you exit this webinar, you should be redirected to the report page where you can access all the materials associated with this report. So again, thank you all for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. Yeah, and I'd like to add my thanks to the committee and also to the audience for today. So thank you all. Yeah.