Barbara Lagerquist

Marine Renewable Energy and Environmental Interactions: Baseline Assessments of Seabirds, Marine Mammals, Sea Turtles and Benthic Communities on the Oregon Shelf

The wave climate along the west coast of North America presents great opportunities for the development of offshore renewable energy, yet initial assessments of the potential ecological effects of wave energy development have only just started. An enhanced regional understanding of the biological resources in the area is needed, and a key information gap is the distribution of both physical substrata and important biological communities. An initial renewable energy project targeted for Oregon is a mobile Ocean Test Facility developed by the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC), led by Oregon State University (OSU), for testing wave energy converters. In addition, a number of wave and wind energy projects have been proposed for the Pacific Northwest of the US. In this chapter, an overview of the oceanographic characteristics of the region is presented, summarizing some of the interactions of concern, and highlighting baseline research projects focused on seabirds, marine mammals and benthic ecology in preparation for siting and deploying the NNMREC Ocean Test Facility and offshore renewable structures generally in the region.

Observations of a Female North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis) in Simultaneous Copulation with Two Males: Supporting Evidence for Sperm Competition

Given the huge size of their testes (approximately 1,000 kg), it has been hypothesized that North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) have a mating system that is based upon sperm competition. Herein, we report an observation which provides support for this hypothesis. On 11 August 2000 in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, a mature female right whale was observed copulating simultaneously with two mature males. The female made no attempt to resist copulation. For anatomical reasons, double copulation would be difficult or impossible in most mammals; however, it is quite feasible in right whales, and the fact that it actually occurs provides strong support for the belief that females of this species promote sperm competition as a mating strategy.