December 14, 2023 — The waters off the coast of New England have gotten noisier in the last year as the nation’s first-ever large-scale offshore wind farms began pile driving steel turbines into the ocean floor.
But developers say they have a way to blunt the deafening sound for whales, dolphins and the endangered species of the northern Atlantic: blowing bubbles.
“Pile driving in the ocean is very, very noisy,” said Richard Hine, whose maritime company ThayerMahan Offshore is the first U.S. firm to pilot “bubble curtains” for wind turbine construction. The walls of air bubbles help absorb sound energy. “You can knock out about 80 to 90 percent of the acoustic energy and get it below levels where they’re harmful to marine mammals,” Hine said.