1nc Oceans Frontline
1. Offshore wind farms disrupt ocean flows – can’t predict any benefits
REILLY 08 Discovery News – NBC [Michael Reilly, Offshore Wind Power Could Alter Ocean
Currents, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27681666/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/offshore-windpower-could-alter-ocean-currents/#.U44MqPk_ClU]
Generating wind power at sea may disturb ocean currents and marine ecosystems, according to a new study.
Offshore wind farms are common in Europe; Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom all have several active
installations. Wind power in the United States is currently confined to dry land, but three installations are planned off the
coast of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, totaling about 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity.
Extracting energy from wind changes regional air currents, which can in turn affect how the nearby ocean
circulates, according to Goran Brostrom of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo.
In a paper published this month in Journal of Marine Systems, Brostrom shows in a model that winds swirling at 11 to 22 miles per hour
downwind of large farms are uneven. As they blow over the ocean they can roil the waters, causing
upwelling.
The change in currents seems small — a nudge of just 3.3 feet per day — and the wind farms have to be around 1.9 square miles. But Brostrom
said the effect is enough to bring nutrient-rich waters up from the depths, which marine life can thrive on.
"I think you will see a large effect over time," he said. "You will get more plankton blooming, and you will see more vibrant
life overall at that place."
Plankton blooms are infamous for causing toxic red tides and for sucking oxygen out of the water. But they can also be food sources for larger
animals.
"Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of debate," Brostrom said. Though he stressed that the goal for any manmade object should be to minimize environmental impact, he added: "I'm an optimist; I think this could be beneficial to local fisheries."
Such dreams of wind farms enriching ocean wildlife — or impacting it in any way — may be a bit premature, said
Michael Dvorak of Stanford University. For one thing, all current farms are situated in water far shallower than the 98-foot depth assumed
in Brostrom's paper. Some deeper farms have been proposed, but maintenance costs skyrocket the further from shore windmills are.
And Brostrom's study is a very general model — ocean currents and marine life could be affected in very
different ways depending on the location of the farm.
"If you want to understand how ocean currents are really going to be affected, you'll want to include the bathymetry at the site," Dvorak said,
referring to analysis of underwater depth, as well as do a detailed, specific study of the area's ecosystem.
Still, Dvorak pointed out Brostrom's study raises a point no one in the wind power industry had yet considered.
"People have looked at the climate effects of wind farms on land, but this is the first to bring up the question of ocean currents," he said. "This is
something we should be looking at."
2. Not enough wind farms could be built – the impact is about all the oceans, even a
few thousand wind farms would not cover a significant portion of the ocean.
3. Natural marine changes are inevitable—ocean species are highly resilient
Dulvy et al. 3 [Nicholas, (School of Marine Science and Tech. @ U. Newcastle), Yvonne Sadovy,
(Dept. Ecology and Biodiversity @ U. Hong Kong), and John D. Reynolds, (Centre for Ecology,
Evolution and Conservation @ School of Bio. Sci. @ U. East Anglia), Fish and Fisheries, “Extinction
vulnerability in marine populations,” 4:1, Blackwell-Synergy]
Marine fish populations are more variable and resilient than terrestrial populations Great natural
variability in population size is sometimes invoked to argue that IUCN Red List criteria, as one example, are too
conservative for marine fishes (Hudson and Mace 1996; Matsuda et al. 1997; Musick 1999; Powles et al. 2000; Hutchings 2001a).
For the (1996) IUCN list, a decline of 20% within 10 years or three generations (whichever is longer) triggered a
classification of 'vulnerable', while declines of 50 and 80% led to classifications of 'endangered' and 'critically endangered',
respectively. These criteria were designed to be applied to all animal and plant taxa, but many marine resource biologists feel that for marine
fishes 'one size does not fit all' (see Hutchings 2001a). They argue that percent decline criteria are too conservative compared to the high natural
variability of fish populations. Powles et al. (2000) cite the six-fold variation of the Pacific sardine population
(Sardinops sagax, Clupeidae) and
a nine-fold variation in northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax, Clupeidae) over the past
two millennia to suggest that rapid declines and increases of up to 10-fold are relatively common in
exploited fish stocks. It should, however, be borne in mind that the variation of exploited populations must be higher than unexploited
populations because recruitment fluctuations increasingly drive population fluctuations when there are few adults (Pauly et al. 2002).
4. Oceans are doomed – overfishing, climate, and populations – things the aff
doesn’t solve
Berwyn 11 [August 30, 2011, Bob, “Study pinpoints key ocean conservation areas”,
http://summitcountyvoice.com/2011/08/30/study-pinpoints-key-ocean-conservation-areas/]
Factoring in other impacts, such as overfishing and global climate change, would likely reveal even more
negative effects on the nine conservation sites, the authors said. “The next 2 billion people we’re going to add to the
planet are going to do much more damage to the ocean than the previous 2 billion did,” said Ehrlich, president of
the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology. “Humans reach for the low-hanging fruit first, so to speak, but for the
ocean that’s gone now.”