UK Wind Turbine Record – Seals Loving It!

RenewableUK industry group reported that United Kingdom wind turbines generated a record 22 percent of the country’s electricity on Sunday 17 August 2014, beating the 24-hour record for the second time in the same week. Wind farms produce an average of 5,797 megawatts- enough to power more than 15 million homes at this time of year, the lobby group said. The data itself came from the UK National Grid; National Grid PLC.  The wind farms produced 21 percent of the UK’s power on Aug. 11, eclipsing the old record of 20 percent set on Dec. 20 last year.

Renewable UK Director of External Affairs, Jeniffer Webber, said

“Wind is a dependable and reliable source of power in every month of the year including high summer.”

Jennifer Webber 300x2091 UK Wind Turbine Record   Seals Loving It!

Something else gave their “seal” of approval to the UK’s offshore wind farms this week: Harbour seals and Grey seals.

Using sophisticated GPS tracking to monitor seals’ every movement, researchers have shown for the first time that some individual seals are repeatedly drawn to offshore wind farms and pipelines. It is suggested that offshore wind turbines probably serve as artificial reefs and attractive hunting grounds. This is according to a study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology last month. The wind farm at Sheringham Shoal seems a favourite.

Sheringham Shoal Wind Farm 2012 300x1971 UK Wind Turbine Record   Seals Loving It!

Deborah Russell of the University of St Andrews said:

“I was shocked when I first saw the stunning grid pattern of a seal track around Sheringham Shoal, you could see that the individual appeared to travel in straight lines between turbines as if he was checking them out for potential prey and then stopping to forage at certain ones. Only a small proportion of our study seals utilized wind farms or pipelines. At present these structures cover a small proportion of the extent of the at-sea distribution of seals. As wind farms become more extensive, many more seals will likely be affected.”

Russell and her colleagues tagged harbour and grey seals on the British and Dutch coasts of the North Sea.

harbor seal 294x3001 UK Wind Turbine Record   Seals Loving It!

Their data showed 11 harbour seals within two active wind farms, Alpha Ventus in Germany and Sheringham Shoal in the southeast coast of the UK. At both sites, some individual seals regularly entered the wind farms and, in some cases, showed these striking grid-like movement patterns as they appeared to forage at individual turbines:

seal movements at Sheringham 300x1681 UK Wind Turbine Record   Seals Loving It!

The researchers also observed both grey and harbour seals associating with sub-sea pipelines. Two seals in the Netherlands encountered a section of pipeline and followed it on multiple trips for up to 10 days at a time.

The research will continue because at present no one knows whether wind farms increase the total amount of prey available to seals or simply concentrate prey in a new and man-made location, making the prey particularly vulnerable to predators such as seals. The researchers say it will be important to resolve this issue so that anthropogenic structures such as wind turbines can be designed and managed to reduce any adverse and increase any positive effects of these structures.