Seals feast at wind farm buffet

TRADITIONAL windmills are cherished in the Netherlands. Their modern equivalents in Ireland, however, are deemed ugly and intrusive. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder; some of today’s elegant streamlined giants will, no doubt, become ‘listed’ structures in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, nobody wants to live near them.

Locating windmills at sea avoids the NIMBY problem but are marine wind farms as eco-friendly as they seem? Seabed habitats may be damaged when foundations are being laid and electricity cables run ashore. Turbines are lethal to flying seabirds; the tips of the largest blades move at around 250km per hour. Whales and dolphins call to each other and use sound pulses to navigate. Wind-mill noise may upset them. However, research on seals, reported on-line in the July edition of Current Biology, suggests that wind-farms, and undersea pipelines, might actually enhance biodiversity.

Dr Deborah Russell and colleagues at the University of St. Andrew attached GPS tracking units to 96 seals in the North Sea. The devices were glued to the fur on the backs of the seals’ necks. Both grey and common seals were tagged. These ‘mermaids’, the souls of sailors drowned at sea according to Irish folklore, also frequent our coasts.