‘Testing’ Well Tested

Jul 24, 2023

By Gail Travers | on August 30, 2023

To the Editor:

Sunday night I attended Save LBI’s event called “Promises and Realities – Wind Turbine Projects Off LBI Shores.” The presenters focused on, and suggested, that the windmill farms should be stopped because “acoustical testing” was affecting marine life off the New Jersey shore. They suggested that not enough was known about the effects of this testing and that studies were needed and that federal and state officials were not interested in learning and studying more.

To the layman listening it would have been as if this was new technology and a good reason to stop the development of the windmill farms.

Acoustical testing is also called geophysical surveying. I worked in the marine geophysical survey business for almost 40 years, hold relevant patents and published numerous articles on the subject.

Marine geophysical surveying has been done for decades. The initial techniques were developed in the 1960s. The technique can be likened to when doctors image a pregnant woman’s stomach (with ultrasound) in order to produce an image of the unborn baby. Geophysical survey produces images of the sea bottom and near subsurface. These images allow engineers to classify the type of sea bottom and near sub-surface geology. Without such information there is the danger that the windmills are built without enough integrity to support their height and weight. The information is also used to plan seabed cable and pipe routes.

To completely acquire the required amount of geophysical data for the proposed windmill farm acreage proposed for New Jersey would involve a few months of survey time. We should compare a few months of “acoustical testing” compared to the decades lifetime of an offshore windmill farm. Once the survey area has been covered, the “acoustical testing” is complete and the activity stops.

Millions of square miles of marine geophysical surveys have been acquired over the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to study the effect on marine life. Geophysical surveys are not new to New Jersey. Hundreds of square miles were acquired in the mid-1980s in an attempt to identify potential offshore oil and gas reservoirs.

Geophysical survey is well known to federal and state marine organizations. When there are concerns about the effects on the environment, management efforts and restrictions are put in place. It would be incorrect to suggest that officials are not interested in the effect on marine life and the ocean environment. It would be incorrect to say that extensive knowledge and experience with regulating geophysical surveying is not available.

The proposed windmill farms are ambitious and their effect on the environment should be well understood. Let’s present the public with the realities of geophysical survey. It will allow us to have more faith in other claims made by organizations such as Save LBI. Let’s spend time (and money) to understand real issues.

Peter Canter

Long Beach Township

The writer is a local resident for 55 years.

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