Video: Foraging seals hunt around wind farms
Below the water, seals are moving from turbine to turbine seeking fish (Image: Mike Page) A tagged seal (Image: Current Biology, Russell et al.)
There’s a new hunting ground for seals: offshore wind farms. It seems seals pop in for a bite to eat because fish gather around the turbine arrays.
of the University of St Andrews, UK, and her colleagues tracked more than 100 and seals in the North Sea with GPS.
They observed 11 seals in two wind farms – Germany’s and the UK’s . Three swam in grid-like patterns from one turbine to another, sometimes stopping to feed. The video above shows the path of one such seal around Sheringham Shoal. A further six fed along sub-sea pipelines for days.
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It is the first time seals have been seen heading to individual undersea structures, says Russell. Offshore constructions like oil rigs are also known to attract animals like corals and fish.
The seals probably aren’t targeting wind farms specifically, but simply visiting areas with lots of fish, says of Ocean Science Consulting in Dunbar, UK. She has seen seals eating fish around oil rigs.
A possible downside is that seals may find the noise from wind farms stressful. We don’t know how the turbines will affect the seals in the long run, says of the University of Exeter, UK.
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