Influence of Offshore Wind Farm Development on the Critically Endangered Taiwanese White Dolphin: Long-Term Acoustic and Visual Evidence

Influence of Offshore Wind Farm Development on the Critically Endangered Taiwanese White Dolphin: Long-Term Acoustic and Visual Evidence

Taiwan’s only endemic cetacean, the critically endangered Taiwanese white dolphin (Sousa chinensis taiwanensis), occupies a narrow coastal habitat in the Eastern Taiwan Strait that overlaps rapidly expanding offshore wind farms. We combined eight years of visual surveys (2016-2023) with five years of passive acoustic monitoring (2017-2022) at Taiwan’s foremost wind-farm site to evaluate long-term responses to underwater noise. During this period…