Emasculating the Gulf of Maine

How Offshore Wind Farms would harm Gulf of Maine Currents

Understand  the Gulf of Maine as a living bio-geo machine, powered largely by wind energy striking its surface. This wind energy doesn't just create waves - it helps organize and drive the currents, top to bottom,   that the Gulf's ecosystems  rely on to carry nutrients  and more to where where fish gather and spawn.

Now, imagine placing massive wind turbines over parts of this system. Each turbine extracts energy from the wind before it hits the water. It's like putting a series of giant straws in the sky, each one sucking out power that would normally hit the water and help drive the currents below.

How much power are we talking about? BOEM's proposed wind areas in the Gulf could extract over 6 gigawatts of energy - that's about 6 billion watts - from the wind before it hits the water. 

This matters, as Norwegian meteorologist Goran Broström discovered back in 2007: when you weaken the wind over an area of ocean bigger than about 10 kilometers (roughly 5.4 nautical miles) across, you start seeing major effects in the water column below. The weakened wind creates areas where water is forced to rise or sink at rates of more than a meter per day. That's enough to disrupt the organized  layering of warm and cold water (thermoclines) and randomize the nutrient movements that fish depend on.

Recent studies in the North Sea have shown these effects are real. Wind farms create "wakes" of weaker wind that can extend up to 40 nautical miles downwind. Within these wakes, wind speeds drop by 2-2.5 meters per second (about 4-5 knots). This isn't just surface effect - it changes how energy moves through the whole water column.

For the Gulf of Maine's current systems - especially the Eastern Maine Coastal Current that many fisheries depend on - this could mean:

• Weaker current speeds where wind power is reduced
• Changed patterns of upwelling and downwelling
• Altered nutrient distribution
• Modified temperature layering, especially during summer months

Think of it this way: if you're running an outboard motor and suddenly drop to half throttle, the wake behind your boat changes dramatically. Now imagine doing that to the wind that helps drive the Gulf's currents. The effects don't just disappear - they ripple through the entire system.

This isn't speculation - it's basic physics, confirmed by studies in places like the North Sea where large wind farms are already operating. The Gulf of Maine, with its unique basin shape and current systems, could be even more sensitive to these changes.

What does this mean for fisheries? That's the multi-billion dollar question. But one thing's certain: you can't remove that much energy from a system without causing changes to how it operates. And in the complex machine that is the Gulf of Maine, those changes could affect everything from plankton to groundfish to the currents themselves.

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