Do offshore wind turbines harm wildlife?

On Thursday 3rd July 2025, some of our team attended a talk hosted by Birdlife North Queensland by Dr Mark Miller at the Malanda Pub, Far North Queensland. Dr Miller, an advocate for offshore wind farms, shared his research on potential impacts to seabirds from offshore turbines.

We learned from Dr Miller that:

  • Anecdotally, young scientists are lucky because wind companies are providing work opportunities, allowing ecologists to segue smoothly from university into the wind industry with a bonus of government funded research grants to ensure offshore wind farms get over the line. (Never mind the fate of the species they research, as long as not too many die from habitat loss or turbine strike!)

  • Dr Miller spoke glowingly of the offshore wind industry in his native UK, stating that the upcoming Hornsea 3 wind farm will provide electricity for x million homes, reciting the marketing spin from the offshore wind developer/s, ignoring the intermittency of the electricity provided and the need for fossil fuel balancing & reserve, which actually increase emissions, to enable this source of energy to be effective.

  • We learned unsurprisingly that offshore wind companies don’t like to pay for cameras to monitor birds who are struck by turbines because they’re expensive.

  • Offshore wind proponents also don’t like to curtail wind turbines to preserve seabird life either, as this cuts into the profitability of the development.

  • Seabirds killed by turbine strike are not monitored at offshore wind farms. Carcass surveys are impossible to perform at an offshore wind farm, so it’s impossible to get any insight into the real impacts on bird life.

  • Procellariforms, tube-nosed seabirds such as Shy Albatross, Petrels and Shearwaters, are acknowledged to be at risk from offshore wind in southern Australia. Slow reproducing and long-lived – a badly sited off shore wind farm can kill breeding adults and impact local populations. That Endangered Shy Albatross in particular are monogamous, can live long lives (up to 60 years), produce only one egg per year and their highest concentration worldwide is in southern ocean was not explicity stated. But offshore wind farms are being slated for our southern ocean: Star of the South is a proposed offshore wind farm to be sited 10km off the coast of Gippsland.

  • Dr Miller found little conclusive evidence regarding heights Procellariforms fly due to his small dataset. He found specifically that a few Shy Albatrosses and the Gould’s Petrel (?) appear to fly at a lower range (under 35 metres, below the range of turbine rotor sweep area for Star of the South), but he admits his own research is limited and it’s all about the quality of the data (more is needed) and that more research is required. His recent study concludes: “Our systematic review found sufficient information in the literature to quantify flight speed and nocturnal flight activity for Procellariiform species and flight groups. However, information on mean flight height was too scarce and information on time in the Rotor Swept Zone too uncertain to inform collision risk modelling, representing a key information gap.”

  • Even so, determining the height at which species fly is not a failsafe. For example, proponents of Kaban wind farm (FNQ) stated in initial EPBC documentation that White-throated Needletails, Fork-tailed swifts will incur  “no significant impacts… as a result of Project activities” but numerous Needletails and Swifts appear to have already been killed by turbine strike since construction in 2023. Five Fork-tailed Swifts and Five Needletails have already been documented in carcass surveys at Kaban and Mt Emerald wind farms in North Queensland over a 3 year period. These figures only reflect carcasses of these tiny birds that happened to have been found during the monthly or bi-monthly carcass surveys, and not every wind turbine location may be attended. Many small birds that die from turbine strike are never detected at all. It is impossible to know how many are really killed here.

  • Miller’s research regarding Procellariforms involved invasive methods of capturing and attaching monitoring equipment to species such as the Shy Albatross - honestly this was confronting to see (please see image below). There are perhaps some examples where invasive methods of survey are warranted, but to catch and attach tracking devices to threatened seabirds (who are already experiencing stressors such as climate change and habitat loss) to destroy their aerial habitat for an expensive and resource-intensive intermittent energy source such as off shore wind is not warranted.

  • Noise and infrasound impacts from offshore wind farms and the pile-driving from construction on seabirds and marine life including dolphins and whales are, by Dr Miller’s own admission, largely unknown.

  • Offshore wind turbines can be beneficial when they create ‘artificial reefs’ on sea floors which can have positive effects on ecosystems destroyed by over-fishing and dragnets. Dr Miller discussed an example of a tracked seal that visited numerous wind turbine sites to feed upon fish found at the newly created artificial reefs there. However during wind turbine construction, sea beds are disturbed and delicate organisms displaced and killed. Whether disruption to such large tracts of this fragile ecology is warranted for offshore wind, an intermittent energy source, is questionable.

  • According to Dr Miller, offshore wind is a good choice for Australia and perhaps a better alternative to onshore wind. This remains to be seen however. As it stands, it appears we are set to be inundated with large-scale onshore wind and solar farms, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and pumped hydro developments.  

  • Perhaps most concerning of all was Dr Miller’s foregone conclusion that offshore wind is necessary and inevitable for Australia.

  • We thank Birdlife for hosting this informative and relevant talk and speaker, and look forward to more opportunities to discuss renewable energy impacts on bird and marine life into the future.

Above: A slide from Dr Miller’s presentation in Malanda showing Procellariiformes bearing invasive monitoring devices for research on flight patterns - information which will be utilised by Offshore wind developers.

Proposed Star of the South wind farm: Who lives here?

How big is the Star of the South wind farm: Up to 400 wind turbines and subsea cables.

Where is it: VICTORIA, AUSRALIA. Proposed for the waters directly to the east of Wilson’s Promontory, Gipplsand, Victoria.

How much ocean habitat will be disturbed:

Offshore wind farm will require a massive 49,642 ha of space in the ocean.

Plus the export cable area: 35,932 ha

And onshore transmission corridors: 49,373 ha total

Source: EPBC Referral

Above: Threatened marine birdlife likely to utilise the airspace of the proposed Star of the South wind farm. Note the Southern Royal Albatross, Wandering Albatross, Buller’s Albatross, Shy Albatross, Black-browed Albatross, Southern Giant-Petrel, Northern Giant-Petrel, Fairy Prion, Flesh-footed Shearwater and Short-tailed Shearwater are likely to to lose habitat to the wind farm. Source: Preliminary marine ecology report, listed here .

Above: Threatened whales likely to move through the ocean off the Gippsland coast slated for the proposed Star of the South wind farm. Source: Preliminary marine ecology report, listed here . Note the Humpback Whale is likely to move through these waters, and the Blue Whale and Southern Right Whale may use the area as a resting / foraging spot on migration. Source: Preliminary marine ecology report, listed here .

Above: Threatened sharks in Star of the South waters: White Sharks are likely, and Australian Grayling and Shortfin Mako sharks are possible. Source: Preliminary marine ecology report, listed here .

Above: Proposed offshore wind farms off the coast of Victoria.

Our own research found that…

Construction noise impacts for offshore wind farms can be lethal for underwater life

“Imagine being at an airport with a Boeing 747 at full power and you put your head near the engine. That's how loud it is. There is concern that if fish are very near piles being driven into the sediment, the sound may be loud enough to kill, or at least severely damage, them.” states Arthur N. Popper, a professor emeritus in the University of Maryland's Department of Biology on the sound of pile-driving during offshore wind farm construction.

A recent study found that pile-driving sounds from offshore wind farm construction badly impacted certain fish species in South East Asia. “Species-specific responses to pile driving noise found in three major aquaculture fish in East Asia. Seabass and seabream greatly changed swimming speed and group cohesion with noise playback. More than half of seabass and seabream individuals habituated within 5 min after noise playback. Seabass was most sensitive species to noise stress showing clear avoidance from the noise source. Implication for consideration of species- and environment-specific biological impact assessments.”

Operational noise from an offshore wind farm never considered

Offshore wind farm projects cause the elevation of low-frequency noise level. This noise can impact several kilometres with its intensity increasing with higher wind speeds and larger turbine sizes.

Elevated underwater noise levels can potentially affect fish vocalization behaviour. Reduced duration and intensity of fish chorus was observed in the noise-affected area during a study in Taiwan. “Our long-term monitoring (i.e., 2014–2019) of the sounds at the Miaoli coast, Taiwan Strait, showed that the increasing anthropogenic activities in the area negatively influenced fish vocalizing behavior, probably as a consequence of increasing noise levels. The site was affected by several noise sources, such as continual vessel noise originating from the fishing port and the construction of a new offshore wind farm, including high-intensity pile driving.”

Impact of sound on marine life is rarely considered. But marine animals “depend heavily on sound. Sound is one of the few communication signals that travel quickly across long distances in the oceans and are not stopped by low light levels or objects in the environment. One of my colleagues and I have argued—and it's reasonably accepted now—that hearing evolved in fishes to give them a bigger worldview than they would get from any other sense. Vision has a limited range and is useless in the dark, and chemical signals travel slowly and are subject to currents. To get a long-distance, 360-degree view of what's going on around them, sound is the best form of communication.” - Arthur N. Popper, interviewed here.

Light flicker impacts marine life

Shadow flicker from rotating turbines may impact marine life. One 2024 study concludes “aquatic receptor organisms present in the uppermost layer of the sea in the vicinity of wind turbines are potentially exposed to direct motion cues originating from moving turbine blades and also, when the sun elevation angle is greater than ca. 20°, to dynamic shadowing cues.” The impacts of continual shadow flicker on marine life in the upper layers of the ocean are unknown but can have far reaching consequences.

Seabirds must change migratory paths or be killed by turbine strike

Seabirds have to alter migratory paths to avoid offshore wind farms, leading to potential impacts such as starvation down the line as they expended more energy and flew a further distance to get to their destination

All 20 of the albatross species found in Australia are listed in Australian law as threatened with extinction.

Seabirds are pushed out of their habitat and altered migratory patterns ensue. The birds are forced to go out of their way and which can affect their survival. There is no way to know outcomes for birds who may be impacted this way.

New research suggests that seabirds and marine mammals forage in the same areas where wind potential is most significant and that their populations may be at risk if wind farms are built there.

More unintended consequences

A perfect example of this occurred in 2021, when it was observed that brown crabs were being mesmerised by the electrical current of undersea cables off the coast in Scotland, leading to biological changes.

States Alastair Lyndon, an associate professor at Heriot-Watt University’s centre for marine biology and diversity: “Underwater cables emit an electromagnetic field. When it’s at a strength of 500 microteslas and above, which is about 5% of the strength of a fridge door magnet, the crabs seem to be attracted to it and just sit still.That’s not a problem in itself. But if they’re not moving, they’re not foraging for food or seeking a mate. The change in activity levels also leads to changes in sugar metabolism – they store more sugar and produce less lactate, just like humans.”

Too many unknowns for minimal benefit

86% of possible offshore wind farm impacts on ecological services are still unknown.

The facts matter

Australia’s own carbon emissions from domestic electricity consumption are extremely low from a global perspective - most of our carbon is exported in the form of fossil fuels. States the report Australia's global fossil fuel carbon footprint August 2024 funded by the Australian Human Rights Institute UNSW through its Australian Climate Accountability Project “In 2022 Australia's total fossil fuel carbon dioxide footprint was around 4.5% of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Only 1.0% was emitted within the country.”

Yet we expect our most threatened and vulnerable flora and fauna to pay the price for our transition to renewable energy, as they are set to lose vast swathes of habitat, in our oceans, air and on the ground, for domestic electricity supply. Our transition to renewable energy will make no difference to global emissions and not impact the bid to stop anthropogenic climate change at all. It will, however, wipe out vital habitat of threatened species, destroy carbon-sink, cooling forests and create reliance upon gas, a fossil fuel, as a “firming” source of electricity into the indefinite future when wind and solar fail to perform.

Distressingly, despite more renewables in our electricity grid than ever before, Australia’s carbon emissions from electricity consumption rose last quarter due to “a 2.2 per cent increased demand for power and a lower than usual contribution from hydro-power..A drought in Tasmania led to lower-than-expected output from the state's hydro-electricity generators, while wind production also fell sharply mid-year.”

This causes us once again to question the genuine benefit of an increased presence of renewable electricity generation in our grid. What’s it all for, in the end? Jobs and growth? But long-term renewable jobs are thin on the ground for locals and the renewables sprawl, from our regional Far North Queensland perspective, looks set to carry on into the indefinite future.

OUR POSITION

We believe that large-scale renewable energy project proliferation in Queensland is inflicting too high a price on our biodiversity and that we are driving threatened species to extinction because of it.

 

An Endangered Shy Albatross, resident of the southern seas off the coast of Tasmania and Victoria, now under threat from Offshore wind farms - JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/)