Offshore Wind Turbines Are Accidentally Creating Thriving Marine Ecosystems. Engineers have laid 54 steel monopile foundations on the Atlantic seabed southeast of Long Island for the Empire Wind 1 project, and researchers are finding the structures are turning what used to be barren sand into something that functions like a reef. In the nearby South Fork Wind project, scientists watched lobsters, black sea bass, mussels, and Jonah crabs colonize the foundations and the rock layers around them in 18 months. Hard surfaces are rare on sandy ocean floors, and marine life appears to move toward them quickly once construction noise subsides