Understanding the Intersection of Offshore Wind Development and Sea Turtles in the U.S. Atlantic

This README is a living document and will change as the repository changes.

A Space and a Place

This GitHub repository is a place and space for discussion and collaboration among members of the NEFSC / PSD / CEB / TE program focused on Offshore Wind Development and Sea Turtles.

Mind Mapping Sea Turtle Ecology

Exploring the relationship between individual and population risk (is this the right term?), as it relates to sea turtles and offshore wind development:

• Scale matters
  • Research tools differ depending on scale
• What should we focus on?

🌎 Spatial considerations

Looking at the active renewable energy leases from BOEM, we see that offshore wind development will make up roughly 2.0% of the Greater Atlantic Region (GAR). Zooming in a bit, to only consider the continental shelf within the GAR (preferred habitat for most sea turtles), we see that offshore wind development will make up roughly 8.8%.

Case study of loggerhead turtle presence in active wind energy lease areas

Loggerhead turtle presence in wind energy areas

Using the predictions from Winton et al. (2018), I extracted the predicted monthly log density values of tagged loggerhead turtles to active wind energy lease areas. I then exponentiated (back transformed from the log scale) the extracted values and summed them by active wind energy lease area (aggregated by state) and month. The max value over all active wind energy lease areas and months was roughly 11.8%.

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