DeepCwind Consortium

Bird and Bat Monitoring on Monhegan Island

Written by Jennifer Vincent Tuesday, 10 August 2010

The University of Maine has teamed with the New Jersey Audubon Society to conduct bird and bat studies as part of the environmental and ecological monitoring plan for the Deepwater Offshore Wind Test Site.

New Jersey Audubon’s mobile bird and bat marine radar monitoring trailer is unloaded on Monhegan Island from a barge.

New Jersey Audubon's mobile bird and bat marine radar monitoring trailer is unloaded on Monhegan Island from a barge.

New Jersey Audubon has sited a mobile bird and bat marine radar monitoring system at the Four Winds Cottage on the southern end of Monhegan Island that will run July through December 2010.

This activity will help characterize flight patterns of birds and bats in the area and contribute to growing knowledge of flyways of birds and bats traversing Maine’s coastal waters and how meteorological conditions affect flight dynamics and behavior.

Spotlight: Touring the Buoy Barn

Written by Jennifer Vincent Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Standing in a cavernous building dubbed the “buoy barn,” Stacy Knapp gestured to five huge looming yellow buoys, all undergoing some kind of maintenance or alteration. Pictures of these buoys, bobbing against the backdrop of a vast ocean, don’t do them justice. They stand more than twice as high as I do and their bases are as wide as most people are tall. In a word, they are overwhelming. Not what you would expect to find in a barn of any kind. Even more impressive are the advanced tools and sensors they carry.

Electronics Engineer Patrick Fikes points out the many sensors he installs and services on the Physical Oceanography Group’s buoys.

Electronics Engineer Patrick Fikes points out the many sensors he
installs and services on the Physical Oceanography Group’s buoys.

It is difficult to imagine moving something so large more than an inch, let alone outside of the buoy barn, but many of these behemoths have seen more of the world than I have. PhOG has designed, built, and maintained moored buoys to collect real-time information not just in the Gulf of Maine, but in oceans around the world, for over 15 years. In 2001, PhOG buoys were deployed as part of the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS), now with the national network supported by the Northeastern Regional Association of Coastal Ocean Observing Systems (NERACOOS).

Spotlight: Breathing Life into Maine’s Manufacturing Industry

Written by Peter Drown Tuesday, 10 August 2010

A wave of ingenuity is transforming the way traditional manufacturing companies do business. Throughout the country, enterprises are taking advantage of a wind industry that installed a record-breaking 10,000 MW of clean, renewable power in 2009. (2009 AWEA Report) Various industry sectors are experiencing growing demand for turbine parts—from the iron foundries where the steel turbine castings are forged to the electronic firms where complex wind measuring instruments are crafted.

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