Jul 20 2011
Increased Boat Traffic
Increased boat traffic for construction and maintenance is a concern when it comes to the installation, operation, and decommissioning of offshore wind turbines. Although there has been a lot of a concern with the impacts of boat traffic on larger organisms such as sea turtle and dolphins, there has been little attention on smaller species such as copepods.
http://www.sfrc.ufl.edu/planktonweb/mysite10/Cyclops.jpg
Recent studies though have shown that their populations could be drastically decreased by boat turbulence. When examining samples of water from an area with very little boat turbulence 5% of the copepods were dead. Areas with very high boat turbulence had up to 34% of the copepods dead. Copepods are towards the bottom of the food chain and a severe drop in their population could affect populations much higher in the food chain (Bickel).
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