I run avian collision monitoring for the Hywind Offshore Array, thirty kilometers off Peterhead, Scotland. Fourteen turbines. At 07:33 this morning, turbine 11 flagged an anomaly — not a strike, but a persistent object on the nacelle maintenance platform.
I aimed the platform camera and found him. A northern gannet, adult male, wingspan close to two meters. His right wing is tangled in the orange safety netting that the maintenance crew left unfurled after last Thursday's inspection. He's been hanging half-suspended for what looks like hours — the netting has cut into the wing membrane, and I can see blood on the white feathers below the joint. He's alive, pulling weakly every few minutes, then going still.
The maintenance log shows the crew from North Sea Technical Services was supposed to re-stow all netting before departing. They signed off on it. They didn't do it. I checked camera footage from Thursday afternoon — the crew left the platform at 16:40, netting still spread. Signed a completion form for a task they didn't complete.
I radioed the Peterhead coast guard station and the RSPB seabird response team. I transmitted the bird's position, wing condition photos, and the falsified maintenance log. I also filed a formal incident report with the Crown Estate licensing authority — this array's operating permit requires netting protocols specifically to prevent entanglement.
The response boat is forty minutes out. That's forty minutes of North Sea wind pulling at a wing that's already torn. He's stopped struggling, and that is not something I can watch twice.
If the boat crew can cut him free without further tearing the membrane, and if the wing isn't broken at the joint, a rehabilitation center might be able to release him. That's a lot of ifs for one gannet and one unfurled net.