After extensive discussions with CLF, Deepwater Wind has agreed to voluntarily adjust its planned construction period to minimize potential impacts to migrating North Atlantic Right Whales -- like this breaching beauty here.

Deepwater Wind is taking exciting new steps to build on last month’s historic agreement to protect critically endangered right whales while developing offshore wind projects. The offshore wind developer, expected to begin construction on the proposed Block Island Wind Farm in 2014 or 2015, has announced an agreement to voluntarily adjust its planned construction period to minimize potential impacts to migrating North Atlantic right whales. This announcement follows extensive discussions with CLF, and shows a willingness to go above and beyond to protect North Atlantic right whales in the pursuit of renewable energy.

In order to fasten the five proposed turbine steel foundations into the steel floor, the developer must undergo pile driving, a process of hammering steel pipes up to 250 ft into the ocean floor. This stage of production could potentially harm migrating right whales, which have been documented feeding in Rhode Island Sound throughout the month of April. Deepwater Wind has adjusted its construction schedule accordingly, deciding that no pile driving will occur before May 1 of the project’s construction year.

Deepwater Wind’s decision to alter its construction schedule for the Block Island Wind project follows another agreement to adopt protections for endangered right whales in federal waters. A first-of-its kind coalition of offshore wind developers and environmental organizations agreed to adopt voluntary measures to protect right whales while expediting responsible offshore wind development. This historic agreement sets out measures that developers will voluntarily implement over the next four years in the Mid-Atlantic Wind Energy Areas stretching from New Jersey to Virginia. In it, key ocean stakeholders have shown great leadership in setting a model for future coalitions, and they have demonstrated a commitment to developing clean energy projects while protecting critically endangered species.

Right whale skim feeding off Provincetown, MA. Photo: Brian Skerry

Shipping lanes in and around San Francisco Bay are being changed to protect the many whales that feed in its krill-rich waters. Blue whales, fin whales, and humpbacks will all benefit from the changes. This action took two years of collaboration, data-sharing, and negotiating among the shipping industry, government agencies, and environmental groups. This, in a nutshell, is the regional ocean planning process.

Why does this matter to a New England conservation group? Well, besides the fact that everybody loves a happy ending, New England has been a leader in this type of effort for many years now.

If there is one dramatic example of the need to coordinate our activities in New England’s ocean it is the tale of our beloved but extremely endangered North Atlantic right whales and the shipping traffic that was threatening their recovery.

Right whales love our productive Gulf of Maine waters – they find an abundance of their favorite krill and copepods that teem in our coastal areas. People are keeping a close eye on these urban whales, since there may be fewer than 500 of them left on the planet. This careful watching was why we knew that shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor was causing big problems for the right whales. In short – right whales are shallow feeders, making them highly vulnerable to fatal ship strikes. And each whale matters in such a small population.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary staff decided to take action to protect the right whales in a bold and unprecedented way. Using 25 years’ worth of whale sighting and state of the art acoustic research Stellwagen Bank officials discovered that the shipping lanes through the Sanctuary also contained the highest concentration of whales, resulting in too often fatal collisions. In a process that took three years and involved collaboration with the Port of Boston, researchers with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cornell Bioacoustic Research Program, and a Texas-based energy company that relies on shipping in and out of the harbor – high quality data on the movements of whales in and around the Sanctuary was mapped and compared with shipping traffic in and out of Boston Harbor.

As a result, in 2007 the Sanctuary slightly altered the shipping lanes – reducing whale strikes by 81 percent.

This wouldn’t have happened without scientists, conservationists, local officials, federal agencies and private industry deciding to work together.

To ensure continuing whale protection there are buoys “listening” for right whales throughout the bay, and there’s even an app for ship captains so they can receive whale location updates on their cell phones – alerting them to slow down or avoid certain areas. A lot of people came together to create an innovative solution to this complicated problem by using the principles of regional ocean planning. Everyone who had a stake in the process had a seat at the table.

This type of coordination is the heart of regional ocean planning. It’s simply about making sure everyone has a say in what in happens in our busy waters, including those of us who value protecting wildlife and natural habitats. As we have more happening in the Gulf of Maine, more ships, more whales, more renewable energy development, we need to be careful to organize these activities in a way that also protects existing commercial and recreational uses.

The pioneering Massachusetts and Rhode Island state ocean use plans are serving as the building blocks of New England’s regional ocean plan for federal waters. CLF is at the vanguard of ocean planning, innovating in New England what has become a national policy initiative intended to improve stewardship of vulnerable marine wildlife and habitats with responsible ocean uses.

Understandably, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which seems to be the first oil spill to have a Facebook page) has been the subject of intense interest on this blog (repeatedly), in New Orleans (which incredibly finds itself in the cross-hairs of ANOTHER disaster) and in nearby Florida, where brilliant and acerbic environmentalist Carl Hiaasen (buy his books, especially the ones for kids) makes his mark on the subject.

But here is a different angle on the disaster. Consider the recent episode here in New England where a quarter of the population of Right Whales were spotted feeding in an area where whales are not normally found. This reminds us that putting an inherently dangerous activity like oil and gas drilling anywhere in the ocean is like playing Russian roulette with the lives of the animals that live in the ocean and our oceans generally.  A lesson that is playing out among the sea turtles who rely on the Gulf of Mexico as a safe place to reproduce.

So what can we do? The first thing is to not open up even more of our coastline to drilling, especially as part of a climate bill that is intended to protect and restore our environment. But the ultimate answer is to reduce use of , and therefore demand for, oil. And that means, more than anything else, reducing our gasoline consumption. How do we do that? Building smart walkable communities with transit options and using far more efficient cars would be a great start.

We have the seen the enemy and it is us . . . but it doesn’t have to be that way forever.