Seals connect the dots to feed at offshore wind farms

As wind farms march out into coastal waters to meet energy demands, seals are learning to use them like local grocery stores, scientists say. A few wily individuals have been spotted prowling the grids of turbines, checking for fish congregating around pillars and stopping to feast when they find them.

Scientists discovered this using GPS monitoring to track the movements of approximately 200 animals — including gray and harbor seals — near offshore wind farms in Germany and Britain. While only a handful of seals ventured into the farms, those that did often returned repeatedly and appeared to forage around wind towers, scientists said in a study published this week in the journal Current Biology.

The routes the seals took through the farms made it clear they knew what they were looking for, said the researchers, led by Deborah Russell of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Video shows how the animals swam straight and fast between towers, then slowly and sinuously near certain turbines, the way seals behave when they eat.

The scientists also found that a few seals followed undersea pipelines, sometimes for up to 10 days at a time, and appeared to find food there too.

Aside from capitalizing on man-made structures, these seals did not stand out from the crowd in any peculiar ways; they also foraged successfully in the open ocean and appeared healthy when the scientists handled them to fit their GPS devices.

While this study marks the first time scientists have documented changes in seal behavior around wind farms, the discovery that such installations might change the ecology of the ocean is not entirely unexpected. Researchers have long recognized that so-called artificial reefs — including oil rigs, shipwrecks and purpose-built cement “reef balls” — provide new habitats for plants and animals and for the fish that eat them.

That larger predators might discover this bounty may only be a matter of time.