Forage Fish Species Prefer Habitat within Designated Offshore Wind Energy Areas in the U.S. Northeast Shelf Ecosystem

Abstract

As the world develops sources of renewable energy, there is an intensifying interest in offshore wind energy production. The Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf (NES) ecosystem has favorable wind dynamics, with active development of wind energy. In this study, we present species distribution models that consider both occupancy and biomass responses for a broad spectrum of fish and macroinvertebrate taxa (n = 177). Building upon prior analyses, habitat was differentiated into overall and core habitats based on statistical distributions of habitat scores. Overall habitat was used to show each species' regional distribution based on fishery‐independent survey captures between 1976 and 2019, whereas core habitat represented where the focus of the species' abundance was located as a subset of overall habitat. Wind energy developments may modify the water column in ways that impact lower‐trophic‐level productivity; therefore, added attention was given to the response of forage species. Over 20% of species showed preferential use of putative and potential wind development areas, including a disproportionate number of forage taxa. Principal usage varied by season, with forage species like Atlantic Menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus and Atlantic Mackerel Scomber scombrus preferentially using the lease areas in spring and Round Herring Etrumeus teres and longfin inshore squid Doryteuthis pealeii using lease areas in autumn. For species with relatively low usage of the lease areas, there was a tendency for the usage related to overall habitat to be lower than usage for core habitat; in contrast, for species with high usage of the lease areas, that usage was higher for overall habitat than for core habitat. The area of habitat tended to have positive trends across species, with these positive trends being disproportionately higher among forage taxa. These results frame the importance of wind lease areas for species in the NES, particularly forage taxa that fulfill many important ecological functions.

Surface and subsurface oceanographic features drive forage fish distributions and aggregations: Implications for prey availability to top predators in the US Northeast Shelf ecosystem

“…Additionally, the imminent development of offshore wind energy (i.e., the construction of large‐scale offshore windfarms) in the NES may contribute to meso‐ and submesoscale changes in localized current patterns circulation and subsurface dynamics, such as stratification (Christiansen et al, 2022 ; Dorrell et al, 2022 ). Although a recent study shows that wind energy lease areas overlap considerably with the core habitat of forage fish species (Friedland et al, 2023 ), it is unknown how these habitat alterations may influence forage fish aggregating behavior in the NES (but see Raoux et al, 2017 ), and, thus, realized prey availability. Unanticipated synergistic interactions between climate change effects, offshore wind energy development, and other anthropogenic stressors, such as pollution and commercial and recreational fisheries, could further alter patterns of forage fish availability across the NES shelf.…”

“…Nonetheless, while forage fishes are primarily mid‐water species, they do use the full water column over the continental shelf via several mechanisms (i.e., diel vertical migration, predator avoidance, spawning, and over‐wintering; Freon & Misund, 1999 ). In the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf ecosystem (NES), forage fishes are routinely captured in bottom trawls and the distribution of these captures is systematic, likely representing true broadscale distribution tendencies (Friedland et al, 2023 ; Roberts et al, 2022 ; Suca, Deroba, et al, 2021 ). However, bottom trawl surveys are ill‐suited for monitoring the distribution of surface‐level FFAs on which many predators rely.…”

Mechanistic modeling of climate effects on redistribution and population growth in a community of fish species

“…CPUE represents kilograms per 20‐min tow, averaged within each stratum, providing an estimate of biomass for each species. This dataset has been utilized for modeling species distributions and environmental associations for both bottom‐dwelling groundfish (Nye et al, 2009) targeted by the trawls as well as pelagic species that inhabit the water column (Friedland et al, 2023; Turner et al, 2016). In our application, we specifically consider data from the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank during the falls from 1985 to 2018.…”

Variation in energy density of northwest Atlantic forage species: Ontogenetic, seasonal, annual, and spatial patterns

“…Although many species of fish and squid are grouped together as "forage fishes," these species vary widely in their energy content and value to higher trophic level predators (Steimle and Terranova 1985;Litzow et al 2006;Spitz et al 2012). Therefore, within regions where species assemblages change due to climate change or wind energy development (Friedland et al 2023), the overall quality of the forage base may change. Further, since high-latitude systems typically support lipid-rich, high-energy prey, the poleward shift of many species in response to warming temperatures will likely result in shifts in the energy available to predators at a given location (Sorochan et al 2019).…”