2022 SOST Opportunities and Actions Roundtable
Summary: Growing energy demands, and the need to decarbonize our economy in response to the climate crisis, is driving an explosion of offshore wind energy (OSW) development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in what may be the largest intentional physical change to a US territory in modern history.
These same OCS waters also support a multi-billion-dollar commercial fishing industry, are habitat for more than 100 endangered species, and provide recreation for millions. Yet despite a range of programmatic efforts to monitor the impacts of rapid offshore energy development, there is currently no robust system in place to safeguard against potential changes to the distribution of these commercially valuable, ecologically important, and endangered species.
To ensure the responsible growth of OSW, the US needs a resilient, modernized telemetry infrastructure that provides reliable, long-term information on species movement patterns as well as equitable access to this data by all ocean stakeholders.
Telemetry is accomplished at various scales through underwater acoustic telemetry or satellite telemetry, depending on temporal or spatial data needs and target species behavior. These depend on telemetry networks such as Atlantic Cooperative Telemetry Network (ACT) or on satellite providers such as Argos for data sharing or transmission. However, the limited extent of spatial coverage, cost, limited duration, and in some cases accuracy limitations, leave significant gaps in our understanding of animal behavior and movement across a variety of taxa.
Sector: Academia, Industry, Government
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
POC: Zac Manchester, zacm@cmu.edu
Other Contacts: Robert MacCurdy, maccurdy@colorado.edu; Jacob Levenson
Jacob.Levenson@boem.gov; Kimberly Richie, RichieK@si.edu; Matthew Ogburn,
OgburnM@si.edu