NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service today announced that it is seeking comments by Wednesday, June 21 on its proposal to authorize Invenergy Wind Offshore, LLC to take marine mammals incidental to marine site characterization surveys in the New York Bight off New Jersey and New York.
The high-resolution geophysical and geotechnical surveys would involve the use of a multibeam echosounder, side-scan sonar, gradiometer, shallow and medium penetration sub-bottom profilers, and sparkers.
NMFS earlier this month also announced that it is seeking comments by Monday, June 5 on its proposal to authorize Virginia Electric and Power Company (d/b/a Dominion Energy Virginia) to take small numbers of marine mammals by Level A and B harassment incidental to the construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial Project between Feb. 5, 2024 and Feb. 4, 2029.
Dominion Energy intends to install up to 176 wind turbine generators and 3 offshore substations, in addition to inter-array and substation interconnect cables. The project would result in a total capacity of 2.5-3 gigawatts.
