OTEC Environmental Impact

1
OTEC Environmental Impact

• Warm Water Intake
• Entrainment
• Impingement

Biota attraction or avoidance
Operational Noise
OTEC

• Discharge Plume
• Redistribution of nutrients
• Algae blooms
• Altered temperature and pH
• Where will it settle?

• Cold water intake
• Entrainment

2
OTEC Environmental Impact

• 1981 EIS update to current oceanographic
  standards
• What data do we need? Stakeholder meeting, June
  2010
• Oceanography baseline nutrients, carbon cycle,
  T, S, O
• Plankton, fish larvae distributions and density
• Megafauna habitat use
• What data is already available?

3
Discharge plume what data is available?

• The Hawaii Ocean Time Series (HOTS)
• 1989 present
• Temperature, Salinity, oxygen, pH, chlorophyll a
• Gaps in data
• Nutrients (1989-2001 only)
• Alkalinity and DIC at deep depths
• Trace metals

4
Entrainment Warm Water Pipe
Boehlert and Mundy 1994. Mar Ecol. Prog. Ser.
1071-13 Seapy. 2008. Mar. Biol. 154(6)
985-995 Poe and Norenburg. 1999. Deep-Sea Res.
(1 Oceanogr. Res. Pap.)  46(7) 1201-1220
5
Entrainment Cold Water Pipe
Flow rate of 0.8m3/s Compare to pilot plant
25m3/s and commercial plant 500m3/s
West Hawaii Explorations Academy
6
Baseline monitoring

• Stakeholder meeting
• Oceanography 3 years
• Ichthyoplankton 1 year
• Marine Mammals and turtles 1 year
• Plankton 2 years
• Taking into account available datasets.

7
Baseline Monitoring Suggestions
1 year Nutrients, trace metals, and deep water
carbon cycle
cafethorium.whoi.edu
Discrete-depth sampling for bacteria, copepods,
total biomass
Consistent monitoring of CWP at NELHA
Dont forget Background acoustics Fishing/backsca
tter for nekton Megafaunal habitat use