Wind Turbines good for the Marine Environment

When the British government announced that there would be an expansion of off shore wind power generation, I personally gave the announcement a cautious welcome. The aspect that I was worried about was would the locating of the turbines damage habitat.

As I did not know, I decided to look into the matter and find out. What added to my concerns was that fishermen and the fishing industry were opposed to this. While I have to say that many fishermen are far from conservation minded, was this a matter where the people closest to that environment were being ignored?

The point where any turbine is located will cause some damage to the sea bed, but as has been proven time and again, building any structure out at sea actually attracts creatures. Ask any diver and wrecks are great places to find a whole range of marine wildlife. Further, artificial reefs have been created in British waters by sinking old vessels and by dropping crushed cars in the sea. All previously cleaned up so they don't create pollution it should be added. This is exactly what has happened around the the locations of existing off shore wind farms. In fact the additional habitat created by these projects are increasingly becoming important conservation areas. Therefore, my one major concern that there was a risk of damaging the marine environment is allayed as these structures enhance rather then damage marine ecology.

So why are the fishermen objecting? Well the main reason is that they would be excluded from fishing in the areas where these wind farms will be located. As each tower is spaced at five hundred metres apart, while there is room to manoeuvre a boat, any towed fishing gear would be in danger of getting snagged. Towed gear is not just simply nets, its the weights and dredges that are the greatest threat.

Here locally at Blyth where the British off shore wind industry started, the original test turbines are no longer generating electricity because the cable connecting the turbines to the shore was damaged by such fishing methods. Therefore with lessons learnt, fishing has to be excluded from the areas where these wind farms are situated and from the areas where the cables run. It should also be noted that the industrial fishing methods that will be excluded from these areas are the ones that have been most damaging to the marine environment.

The real problem with the fishing industry is that almost all the fishing methods are unsustainable. Fishermen are harvesting from the diminishing breeding population and are also taking fish and marine creatures that have not yet reached sexual maturity. Hence fishermen are and will cry foul of anything that restricts their activities. But just as happened to deep mining here in the UK, there comes a point when the industry has to end. With mining while there was still coal there, it was becoming increasingly dangerous to dig that coal out. However, with fishing unless we stop fishing now, the fishermen themselves will kill their own industry.

The fishing industry is in fact being very short sighted, as one of the advantages of the installation of all these off shore wind turbines will be to create undisturbed breeding and feeding grounds for an extensive variety of marine species. This will in time provide the solution to the collapse of marine animals that are used for food.

While I don't think that wind turbines are the whole solution to climate change, all of the incidental benefits of these off shore wind farms will make them vital for providing energy in the future.

One of the interesting things that I have discovered, Denmark have suffered much less than most nations with the hike in energy prices that has been occurring in recent years. Not least, because of the investment that they made in wind turbines in the past. While we in Britain are playing catch up on this, in ten years time we will actually have the buffer against the price rises that will happen in years to come. Equally once all these turbines are installed we will have done more to protect the marine environment than has ever happened in any part of our planet.

Climate Change and Bird Populations

While the effect of a warming climate will have many predictable consequences, it is the impacts that the majority of the population don’t think about that are in fact the more serious ones.

In some migrating birds choosing not to winter in the UK, many people will assume that this is just a minor matter. Interesting to note but what will be the impact upon my life, they will say. Well, the impacts could be greater than people assume.

Because of the importance of the UK as wintering grounds our agriculture practices have been modified to accommodate these influxes of birds. This is not just about the crops that are grown but the husbandry of farm animals. When you have large populations of birds migrating to the UK there has to be a food source for them, geese and ducks will help clear large areas of grass, thus reducing the cost of farming these lands. Also some of the birds will feed on grubs and insects that present over winter, keeping that population in check. Who knows what the effect on human and animal health this change will bring.

Further there is the impact upon tourism in the areas where these birds flock; there are many small communities that are reliant upon the tourist pound that the bird’s presence brings.

Then there are the problems for the communities where the birds are now choosing to over winter. Will the birds be competing for valuable or scarce resources? Are they competing with man for these? If the answer to any of these is yes the populations of these many species of birds will be at serious risk.

Climate change is already creating a serious problem for the summer breading populations of sea birds. The warming of the seas is reducing the populations of sand eel’s that so rely on to feed and raise their young. This means that populations of internationally important species are in decline. But its not just the effect upon the birds that this should be causing concern, what about the rest of the food chain and the fish that humans eat? In the North Sea fish stocks are already looking as if they are in terminal decline.

There will be some people who will think that this doesn’t really matter, there are other more important issues to worry about, but the reality is this is the most important issue of the day. Unless we act now, we not only risk causing the mass extinction of animal populations, but our own extinction as well.