March 22, 2021 — Off the coast of New Jersey these days, surveillance vessels hired by European energy companies are taking measurements of the ocean depths, and underwater research drones are analyzing water temperatures to accumulate data on the Mid-Atlantic “Cold Pool.”
Onshore in places like the Port of Paulsboro along the Delaware River south of Camden and Philadelphia, labor unions, port officials and politicians are angling for new marine terminals to build and ship off massive steel monopiles.
And in weekly board meetings, state-appointed officials in charge of the Garden State’s public utilities are discussing massive overhauls to the power grid and many miles of new transmission lines.
Billions of dollars will be invested in the next several years — at sea and on land — to erect hundreds of wind turbines miles from the coast in order to bring New Jersey 7,500 megawatts of renewable energy. That’s enough to power half of the state’s 1.5 million homes.
Politicians, environmentalists and European companies have invested interest in the plans. Big issues still to confront include lucrative North Atlantic fishing concerns; ecological effects on what is known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight’s “Cold Pool”; and the fundamental remaking of power grids that bring the electricity into homes and businesses of 100 million Americans.
Every year off the coast of the eastern United States, from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, forms a unique oceanographic feature called “the Cold Pool.”
It’s a layering of water temperatures that makes for breathtakingly cold water near the ocean floor and much warmer water near the surface and beaches. The effect is called stratification, and it is created each spring, peaks each summer and mixes up once again each fall.
The stark difference in water temperature during the late spring and summer months makes it one of Earth’s unique marine ecosystems. It gives the continental shelf off the northeastern United States a diversity of fauna that has persisted for centuries. Fishermen and scientists alike credit the Cold Pool with powering the renowned fisheries of New England, New Jersey and Maryland.
No one knows the extent to which thousands of wind turbines would have on the stratification process, or if the twirling horizon-scrapers will affect the Cold Pool at all.