Skip to main content

PNNL

  • About
  • News & Media
  • Careers
  • Events
  • Research
    • Scientific Discovery
      • Biology
        • Chemical Biology
        • Computational Biology
        • Ecosystem Science
        • Human Health
          • Cancer Biology
          • Exposure Science & Pathogen Biology
        • Integrative Omics
          • Advanced Metabolomics
          • Chemical Biology
          • Mass Spectrometry-Based Measurement Technologies
          • Spatial and Single-Cell Proteomics
          • Structural Biology
        • Microbiome Science
          • Biofuels & Bioproducts
          • Human Microbiome
          • Soil Microbiome
          • Synthetic Biology
        • Predictive Phenomics
      • Chemistry
        • Computational Chemistry
        • Chemical Separations
        • Chemical Physics
        • Catalysis
      • Earth & Coastal Sciences
        • Global Change
        • Atmospheric Science
          • Atmospheric Aerosols
          • Human-Earth System Interactions
          • Modeling Earth Systems
        • Coastal Science
        • Ecosystem Science
        • Subsurface Science
        • Terrestrial Aquatics
      • Materials Sciences
        • Materials in Extreme Environments
        • Precision Materials by Design
        • Science of Interfaces
        • Solid Phase Processing
          • Cold Spray
          • Friction Stir Welding & Processing
          • ShAPE
      • Nuclear & Particle Physics
        • Dark Matter
        • Flavor Physics
        • Fusion Energy Science
        • Neutrino Physics
      • Quantum Information Sciences
    • Energy Resiliency
      • Electric Grid Modernization
        • Emergency Response
        • Grid Analytics
          • AGM Program
          • Tools and Capabilities
        • Grid Architecture
        • Grid Cybersecurity
        • Grid Energy Storage
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
          • Earth System Modeling
          • Energy System Modeling
        • Transmission
        • Distribution
      • Energy Efficiency
        • Appliance and Equipment Standards
        • Building Energy Codes
        • Building Technologies
          • Advanced Building Controls
          • Advanced Lighting
          • Building-Grid Integration
        • Building and Grid Modeling
        • Commercial Buildings
        • Federal Buildings
          • Federal Performance Optimization
          • Resilience and Security
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
        • Residential Buildings
          • Building America Solution Center
          • Energy Efficient Technology Integration
          • Home Energy Score
        • Energy Efficient Technology Integration
      • Energy Storage
        • Electrochemical Energy Storage
        • Flexible Loads and Generation
        • Grid Integration, Controls, and Architecture
        • Regulation, Policy, and Valuation
        • Science Supporting Energy Storage
        • Chemical Energy Storage
      • Environmental Management
        • Waste Processing
        • Radiation Measurement
        • Environmental Remediation
      • Fossil Energy
        • Subsurface Energy Systems
        • Carbon Management
          • Carbon Capture
          • Carbon Storage
          • Carbon Utilization
        • Advanced Hydrocarbon Conversion
      • Nuclear Energy
        • Fuel Cycle Research
        • Advanced Reactors
        • Reactor Operations
        • Reactor Licensing
      • Renewable Energy
        • Solar Energy
        • Wind Energy
          • Wind Resource Characterization
          • Wildlife and Wind
          • Community Values and Ocean Co-Use
          • Wind Systems Integration
          • Wind Data Management
          • Distributed Wind
        • Marine Energy
          • Environmental Monitoring for Marine Energy
          • Marine Biofouling and Corrosion
          • Marine Energy Resource Characterization
          • Testing for Marine Energy
          • The Blue Economy
        • Hydropower
          • Environmental Performance of Hydropower
          • Hydropower Cybersecurity and Digitalization
          • Hydropower and the Electric Grid
          • Materials Science for Hydropower
          • Pumped Storage Hydropower
          • Water + Hydropower Planning
        • Grid Integration of Renewable Energy
        • Geothermal Energy
      • Transportation
        • Bioenergy Technologies
          • Algal Biofuels
          • Aviation Biofuels
          • Waste-to-Energy and Products
        • Hydrogen & Fuel Cells
        • Vehicle Technologies
          • Emission Control
          • Energy-Efficient Mobility Systems
          • Lightweight Materials
          • Vehicle Electrification
          • Vehicle Grid Integration
    • National Security
      • Chemical & Biothreat Signatures
        • Contraband Detection
        • Pathogen Science & Detection
        • Explosives Detection
        • Threat-Agnostic Biodefense
      • Cybersecurity
        • Discovery and Insight
        • Proactive Defense
        • Trusted Systems
      • Nuclear Material Science
      • Nuclear Nonproliferation
        • Radiological & Nuclear Detection
        • Nuclear Forensics
        • Ultra-Sensitive Nuclear Measurements
        • Nuclear Explosion Monitoring
        • Global Nuclear & Radiological Security
      • Stakeholder Engagement
        • Disaster Recovery
        • Global Collaborations
        • Legislative and Regulatory Analysis
        • Technical Training
      • Systems Integration & Deployment
        • Additive Manufacturing
        • Deployed Technologies
        • Rapid Prototyping
        • Systems Engineering
      • Threat Analysis
        • Advanced Wireless Security
          • 5G Security
          • RF Signal Detection & Exploitation
        • Grid Resilience and Decarbonization
        • Internet of Things
        • Maritime Security
        • Millimeter Wave
        • Mission Risk and Resilience
    • Data Science & Computing
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Graph and Data Analytics
      • Software Engineering
      • Computational Mathematics & Statistics
      • Future Computing Technologies
        • Adaptive Autonomous Systems
      • Visual Analytics
    • Publications & Reports
    • Featured Research
  • People
    • Inventors
    • Lab Leadership
    • Lab Fellows
    • Staff Accomplishments
  • Partner with PNNL
    • Education
      • Undergraduate Students
      • Graduate Students
      • Post-graduate Students
      • University Faculty
      • University Partnerships
      • K-12 Educators and Students
      • STEM Education
        • STEM Workforce Development
        • STEM Outreach
        • Meet the Team
      • Internships
    • Community
      • Regional Impact
      • Philanthropy
      • Volunteering
    • Industry
      • Available Technologies
      • Industry
      • Industry Partnerships
      • Licensing & Technology Transfer
      • Entrepreneurial Leave
      • Visual Intellectual Property Search (VIPS)
  • Facilities & Centers
    • All Facilities
      • Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility
      • Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center
      • Energy Sciences Center
      • Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory
      • Grid Storage Launchpad
      • Institute for Integrated Catalysis
      • Interdiction Technology and Integration Laboratory
      • PNNL Portland Research Center
      • PNNL Seattle Research Center
      • PNNL-Sequim (Marine and Coastal Research)
      • Radiochemical Processing Laboratory
      • Shallow Underground Laboratory

Triton

  • Current Research
    • Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking
    • Particle Motion and Flow Noise
    • Probability of Encounter Model
    • Anthropogenic Light
    • Integrated Collision Detection and Mitigation
    • Collision Risk Data Collection and Processing
  • Past Research
    • Triton Field Trials
    • FOA Technology Development
    • Fish Mesocosm Study
  • Meet the Team
  • Triton Stories
  • Work With Us
  • News
    • Newsletter Archive
  • Resources

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Projects
  3. Triton

Collision Risk

Current energy converters, such as riverine or tidal turbines, may create obstacles for fish, diving seabirds, and marine mammals because of turning blades and other device parts. Collison risk is the possibility of animals interacting with equipment components, particularly moving parts, of current energy converters. The risks include animals moving too close to a current energy converter or water currents overpowering an animal, causing them to move through the rotor-swept area. Outcomes could be a near-miss event, a collision leading to minimal or no injury, or a higher consequence interaction leading to significant injury and possible mortality. For endangered or threatened species, loss of a single or a few animals could impact a population—this is a concern for regulators permitting the deployment of these devices.  

Uncertainty around collision risk remains high due to the difficulty of effectively monitoring collision events. The Triton Field Trials (TFiT) collision risk team worked to determine the best monitoring methods to improve observation and testing of animal behavior around marine energy devices to make sure these devices are safe for marine life.  To understand the extent of this risk, scientists need to know when these interactions happen, and the outcome of collisions. 

Triton researcher preparing for collision risk field trials.
Garrett Staines, the collision risk task lead, conducts pre-field tests on monitoring equipment at PNNL-Sequim. (Photo by Alicia Amerson | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Encounter risk estimates help inform the likelihood that an animal would approach a specific habitat where a marine energy device could be installed. To date, research has included modeling, telemetry for tracking wildlife, passive acoustic vocalization detection for presence and 3D localization of marine mammals, and flume studies with fish and small turbines. The sensors typically used include hydrophones, visual surveys, fisheries echosounders, multibeam echosounders, acoustic cameras, and video cameras.   

TFiT tackled the challenge of observing collision, near-miss events, and animal behavior around turbines. This research requires sensors that provide high-resolution imagery in close range of a turbine, which means the team largely relied on video and acoustic cameras. The TFiT collision risk stressor group conducted testing of these methods at the University of New Hampshire Living Bridge tidal deployment platform in a busy port environment and the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site—a high-energy, low-visibility, riverine turbine testing site.  

At the Living Bridge, an acoustic camera and underwater video camera were deployed to test how well these instruments detect objects as they approach and interact with an operational turbine. In addition, tethered fishing lures were used as artificial targets and helped to assess how well these two underwater observation technologies performed at visually detecting blade interaction. 

 

Triton Field Trials at the Tanana River Test Site.
The barge at the Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site where the collision risk team conducted field trials in Nenana, Alaska. (Photo by Amanda Byrd | Alaska Center for Energy and Power) 

Triton also collaborated with Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the Pacific Marine Energy Center, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences to collect data around a riverine turbine in the Tanana River's highly turbid waters. At this site, the team deployed an acoustic camera. Unlike video cameras, these acoustic technologies generate a two-dimensional image of the water, animals, and detritus just upstream of the turbine, allowing observations to be made in murky and low-visibility conditions. To ground-truth fish activity observed with the acoustic camera, University of Alaska Fairbanks fish biologists captured fish with an incline plane trap behind the equipment to verify the targets the Triton team saw on the footage. This collaborative effort enabled the team to gather data on fish behavior around the turbine and helped to inform practices for monitoring collision risk. 

The data from these field trials, in addition to providing informative empirical data to regulators, could provide key inputs to models sensitive to animal detection and behavior near a turbine, such as avoidance and evasion.  

Results from the collision risk field trials are published here: Capabilities of an Acoustic Camera to Inform Fish Collision Risk with Current Energy Converter Turbines 
 

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Alaska Center for Energy and Power created a video highlighting Triton's collision risk research in a nutshell. Learn about the fieldwork the collision risk team conducted at the Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site in Nenana, Alaska.
 
Fish biologist Garrett Staines presents methods, results, and recommendations from the Triton Field Trials collision risk research.  

 

News & Publications

JULY 13, 2022
Research Highlight

Triton Field Trials Special Issue Makes a Splash for Marine Energy

Read
Triton researcher prepares an underwater camera for deployment during the Triton Field Trials.
DECEMBER 1, 2020
Research Highlight

Do Fish Swim Around or Through Energy Devices in the Water?

Read
GarrettStainesstaffphoto
Subscribe to the Triton newsletter

Contact

Garrett Staines
Research Scientist
garrett.staines@pnnl.gov
(360) 681-3642

Research topics

Marine Energy
Environmental Monitoring for Marine Energy

PNNL

  • Get in Touch
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Doing Business
    • Environmental Reports
    • Security & Privacy
    • Vulnerability Disclosure Policy
  • Research
    • Scientific Discovery
    • Energy Resiliency
    • National Security
Subscribe to PNNL News
Department of Energy Logo Battelle Logo
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is managed and operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • X (formerly Twitter)
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn