California has approved $3 million to develop wind-turbine mooring lines that could listen for whale calls while tracking structural strain and snagged fishing gear. The California Energy Commission approved the research funding for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on January 21, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Researchers want to turn the lines holding floating turbines in place into a continuous monitoring network. It is a promising route toward better oversight of offshore equipment and marine activity, but the official plan describes a system to be developed and tested, not a proven way to rescue whales<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many offshore wind turbines stand on foundations attached directly to the seabed. But much of California\u2019s promising wind resource lies above water too deep for that approach, making floating systems the practical option in those areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Floating does not mean drifting freely. These platforms need mooring lines to hold them in position, while waves and storms keep the structures moving. Inspecting equipment in remote, rough water can be difficult and expensive, which makes small, unnoticed faults a costly problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge is not just building something that can float. Engineers also need to understand how these structures respond to repeated movement, and their monitoring tools must capture changes across equipment spread over large distances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The technology is called distributed fiber optic sensing. Light travels through a thin glass-cored cable, and instruments analyze the light scattered back to reveal changes in strain, vibration, or temperature along the fiber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the new system, the fiber would be embedded in synthetic mooring rope. Combining acoustic, strain, and temperature measurements would let the same line report both its condition and activity in the surrounding ocean<\/a>. The design targets coverage along at least 1 kilometer (about 0.6 miles) of mooring line, rather than measurements at just a few isolated points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a January 2025 account of related turbine research, Berkeley Lab scientist Yuxin Wu described the long-term vision. \u201cThe ultimate goal is to have fiber optic built into the systems, offering what you could call a \u2018nervous system\u2019 for the turbines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The project, known as DREAMS, aims to record low-frequency marine mammal vocalizations between 10 and 500 hertz. Separately, it will test whether changes in strain can reveal abandoned fishing gear, such as crab pots and ghost nets, caught on mooring lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That distinction matters. Hearing a whale<\/a> does not establish that it is trapped, and detecting snagged gear is not the same as demonstrating a successful rescue. The proposed measurements answer different questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is already supporting evidence for the listening approach. In related research reported by UC Berkeley, a fiber optic cable lowered from a boat in Monterey Bay recorded humpback whale calls, with results compared against conventional underwater microphones called hydrophones. The work, published in Seismological Research Letters in 2025, supports the listening concept rather than demonstrating the complete DREAMS system.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy California needs a different kind of wind farm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Read More: South Fork Wind\u2019s 12 turbines off Long Island are already working as artificial reefs, and black sea bass catches were ten times higher at nearby Block Island, but scientists warn that more fish around a turbine doesn\u2019t mean more fish in the ocean<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
How a mooring line can listen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Whale calls and entanglements are different signals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Read More: Two giant bubble rings were built around offshore wind foundations near Virginia Beach, but the seabed exposed what they could not stop<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Small faults can become big offshore repairs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n