July 30, 2019 — Marine scientists say concerns expressed by opponents of a Massachusetts offshore wind project overstate the potential risk to endangered North Atlantic right whales.
“There are so many other things that we cumulatively are doing that are having a much more profound and direct impact on the population,” said Chris Clark, a scientist in the bioacoustics research program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.
The Vineyard Wind project is a planned 84-turbine wind farm to be sited about 15 miles southwest of Nantucket. It is expected to be the first major offshore wind installation in the United States. The state of Massachusetts has chosen the project to provide up to 800 megawatts of power.
The project needs more than 25 local, state, and federal permits to begin construction. Among these is an Incidental Harassment Authorization from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division, which would establish limits on the numbers of marine mammals that could be injured or whose activities could be disturbed by the construction.