Endangered whales and other sea creatures moving through the waters off New England have a team of guardians and advocates looking out for their safety from every vessel and on-water platform related to offshore wind development.

These are protected species observers (PSOs), which are required by federal law and posted on decks of offshore wind work vessels, from the first survey boats examining the seafloor of a newly granted lease area through every phase of construction that follows.

The crow’s nests of the old Age of Sail and the goal of spotting whales to hunt and kill are long gone. What remains of that practice for today’s PSOs is the task of standing on deck and sweeping their gaze back and forth across the water, continuously looking for whales and other endangered marine mammals. If a PSO spots a whale within a specific distance from the work area, he or she must call an immediate halt to all activity.

PSOs are employed and deployed to offshore work around the globe by companies that subcontract these services to wind developers, as well as to the offshore oil and gas industry and academic research vessels.

SouthCoast Wind, based in Fall River, Mass., has embarked on a multiyear project to train PSOs, with a specific emphasis on recruiting Indigenous people.

(Following a multistate request for proposals, SouthCoast Wind recently won a bid to produce 200 megawatts of wind-powered electricity for Rhode Island. Work is expected to begin in 2025, producing power by 2030. Turbines will be in an area off the Massachusetts coast to which SouthCoast obtained lease rights in 2018.)

The PSO training is an intensive 10-day program happening at SouthCoast headquarters in Fall River. Training is free and includes a $1,000 stipend, paid travel, and local accommodations. Classes touch on subjects such as marine mammal species and identification, mitigation (avoidance) protocols, the history of regulatory documents, life on a boat, report writing, use of equipment, and onboard safety.

The program includes a two-day trip to Houston for a specialized sea survival unit, where students face dilemmas like falling into the ocean weighted down by heavy equipment.

After the students finish training and pass a certification exam, they will presumably return home and at some later point get hired by a maritime services contractor that deploys PSOs to offshore projects. The graduates are not obligated to work for a SouthCoast project but “they will have the first preferred job placement on any SouthCoast Wind project,” said Kelsey Perry, SouthCoast external affairs manager. “We would love to see them working on a SouthCoast Wind project but our goal is to get then certified and working.”

In the classroom

Last week, three students hovered over keyboards and workbooks in the Fall River classroom.

The newest students included Paul Martinez, 42, a Cherokee from Oklahoma who has moved to Rhode Island, and two cousins from eastern Long Island, Melissa Allen, 33, and Edward Love, 37, both members of the Shinnecock Tribe there. All three had previous work histories in areas such as public health education, care for elderly people and people with special needs, and grant work. One of the three did some research work in Costa Rica.

Martinez said it was “awesome that this company is reaching out to the Indigenous community. We have always been stewards of the land. Watching out for wildlife is what we were born to do.”

Martinez said he would “take pride in holding up the law to protect these species.” He said his brother came East to take a job with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and that started to get him thinking about maritime-related work.

Speaking of SouthCoast’s motive for training Native Americans in particular, Dugan Becker, community liaison, said, “We try to have an emphasis on providing opportunities for underserved and under-represented communities.” Indigenous people, Becker said, “have an ancestral knowledge of local ecosystems; this goes to the core of their culture. There is a logical alignment between the skill sets of Native Americans and what PSOs are expected to do.”

“Offshore wind is in its infancy and we feel a responsibility to do things right on this first round of projects,” he said. “We want everyone involved.”

Melissa Allen, the only woman in the current batch of students, arrived at class one day last week with her braids in elaborate yellow leather wrappings, bright beaded earrings, a feather in the back of her hair, and a small leather medicine bag filled with sage, sweetgrass, and cedar around her neck. She had made a similar bag for her cousin, Edward Love, also a member of the class.

Allen grew up in the Shinnecock Indian Territory at the far eastern end of Long Island between a large bay and the Atlantic Ocean. “Growing up, we are taught a lot about our culture,” she said. She noted Shinnecock people hunted whales in the old times, adding quickly that “every part of the whale was used.” With no children or similar impediments to a traveling life, Allen said she hopes to make PSO work her career.

Allen said the opportunity inspired her because she loves animals. “I was the kid who was always saying, ‘I’m going to swim with the dolphins.’” She worked as a caretaker for sick and elderly people and was thinking of pursuing a career as a nurse, but watching her grandmother die of cancer caused her to “take a step back.”

Love, said, “It’s a great thing to be getting paid to help the wild protect itself. It is an opportunity for making a living and it is also someone’s responsibility.”

A PSO who accepts as many assignments as possible can earn $80,000 or more a year, according Stephanie Milne, senior environmental manager for TetraTech RPS, an international provider of consulting and engineering services that is doing the PSO training for SouthCoast. Milne said there are hundreds of certified PSOs in the United States, and work assignments are abundant.

Milne said her company tells its PSO employees, “We have as much work for you as you want.” This is a change from a couple of decades ago, she said, when the work was more cyclical. Now, demand for these professionals, along with their pay, has “skyrocketed,” Milne said, largely because of offshore wind.

At least 30 offshore wind projects are at some stage today in the United States.

Protection in the law

Impetus for the protection of endangered species comes from the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Rules, including use of PSOs, are promulgated by NOAA and applied to offshore wind development by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The National Science Foundation, touching on academic research, and the military have their own procedures for protecting endangered marine species, according to Milne.

Commercial fishing and marine shipping “are not governed by that [environmental] legislation,” she said. “They operate outside of [environmental law] requirements.”

SouthCoast Wind and Rhode Island Energy are now negotiating a contract for the 200-megawatt project. The details aren’t yet known. However, it is instructive to look at the many pages defining use of PSOs in the Letter of Authorization (LOA) between the NMFS and Revolution Wind, now building at 65-turbine wind facility off the Massachusetts/Rhode Island coast.

For starters, the LOA says, “all vessel operators, crews, and visual observers must maintain a vigilant watch for all marine mammals during all vessel operations and slow down, stop their vessel, or alter course to avoid striking any marine mammal.”

Further narrowing the responsibility, the LOA says visual and passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) must be conducted onboard. PAM uses acoustic sensors in the water to record animal and environmental sounds. Using PAM systems requires some additional training beyond that of PSOs. PSOs and PAM operators must monitor “appropriate networks” and Channel 16 to keep up to date on whale sightings.

Observers must be equipped with alternative technology like night vision devices or infrared cameras to monitor clearance and shutdown zones during periods of low visibility such as darkness, rain, or fog.

Requirements for use of PSOs and acoustic monitoring are ramped up during pile-driving of turbines and during detonations of unexploded ordinance on the seafloor.

The letter says, “For [turbine] foundation installation and [unexploded ordinance] detonation, PSOs must … monitor clearance zones for marine mammals for a minimum of 60 minutes, where the zone must be confirmed free of marine mammals at least 30 minutes prior to commencing these activities. The minimum visibility zone must extend 2,300 meters from the pile May 1 through November 30 and 4,400 meters during December.”

Also: “Revolution Wind [must] deploy two dedicated PSOs vessels to monitor the clearance and shutdown zones prior to and during impact pile driving installation of [turbine] foundations. In addition to the three PSOs on the pile driving platform, three PSOs must be deployed on each of the [two] dedicated PSO vessels to monitor for marine mammals.”

In the case of unexploded ordinance, “NMFS is now requiring that Revolution Wind must deploy at least three PSOs on each observation platform for all detonations with clearance zones less than 5 km (3.1 mi).”

PSOs may order a work stoppage if whales are sighted. The LOA says, “a requirement to shut down impact pile driving (if feasible) if a North Atlantic right whale is observed or if any other marine mammals are observed entering shut down zones.”

Perry said, “Developers are more than willing to put PSOs on vessels. We want to provide as much mitigation [avoidance and protection] around marine mammals as we can.”

Career ahead

When the current three students finish their training and certification, the program will have turned out a total of six graduates. Perry, of SouthCoast, said building the program has been an uphill effort, for many reasons.

When a potential applicant expresses interest, SouthCoast conducts intensive conversations about whether a PSO career, starting with the 10-day training, is a good choice for the person.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about the hurdles that people need to face to do this training,” said Perry, such as leaving existing home-based jobs or commitments and traveling to Fall River.

Among the stresses of the career itself is the inherent danger of the job, the need to travel to far-flung ports where the work is based, irregular schedules, and being out at sea for long deployments away from home and family.

Among the baseline skills needed to be a PSO, a person needs good eyesight, the ability to lift heavy objects, and to stand watch for long periods of time. A POS must be diligent and able to use computer programs to do detailed reporting.

A PSO also needs to have the fortitude to call a temporary halt to a big and probably costly project for the sake of not harming an animal — possibly one of only 350 surviving North Atlantic right whales — moving through distant waves.