Seals Use Offshore Windfarms to Hunt For Prey

Seals are using offshore windfarms on the British and Dutch coasts of the North Sea, according to a new study.

At both the German and U.K. sites, GPS tracking showed a number of seals worked their way through the area in a grid-like pattern, travelling in straight lines between individual turbines where they focued on their prey.

"As far as we know this is the first study that's shown marine mammals feeding at wind farms," said Deborah Russell, a researcher from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, according to UPI.

Research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Marine biologists tracking a group of 11 seals found the pack visited two wind farms, one off the coast of Germany and the other near the southeastern coast of England.

While visiting, the seals' movements showed they traveled from turbine to turbine, looking for prey that had made a home of the artificial reefs.

"I was shocked when I first saw the stunning grid pattern of a seal track around Sheringham Shoal," Russell said of the wind farm in Norfolk, according to UPI. "You could see that the seal appeared to travel in straight lines between turbines, as if he was checking them out for potential prey and then stopping to forage at certain ones.

Offshore wind farms have struggled to establish themselves in the U.S., where they are constantly fought by coastal homeowners who "don't want their view ruined," according to UPI.

Europe has led the way in terms of renewable energy projects along its shores.

For humans, these farms mean more environmentally friendly and cheaper energy. For seals however, it means additional hunting grounds, as Russell and her fellow researchers found out.

 "There are some issues of course with having animals more in the vicinity of anthropogenic activities, because you've got maintenance vessels in the area, you've got some noise from the wind turbines, so that could be negative," explained Russell. "But on the other hand it's obviously quite successful in terms of foraging for these individuals, because they're choosing to go back to these anthropogenic reefs time after time."