Imagine sections of the Great Lakes dotted with rows of gleaming, 12-story turbines, blades whirring in the stiff breeze as they generate electricity for homes and businesses onshore.

It's only an idea - for now. But government regulators are bracing for an expected wave of proposals for offshore power generation in a region that never seems to run short of wind.

Despite its allure as a plentiful source of clean energy, they say, offshore wind power could affect the aquatic environment and commerce. State and federal officials are taking initial steps toward writing rules, as conservation activists watch closely.

"This is our last frontier, our wild west," said Jennifer Nalbone, navigation and invasive species director for the advocacy group Great Lakes United. "Renewable energy is the direction we want to go, but you don't want to enter it blindly."

Insiders reported on the situation during the International Submerged Lands Management Conference in Traverse City, which began Monday and was continuing through Wednesday.

They said anchoring large wind farms on Great Lakes bottomlands would have implications for commercial and recreational navigation, water quality, fish habitat and even flight patterns for birds and aircraft.

Wind power developers are wondering what kinds of regulatory hurdles they will encounter once they propose offshore projects, said John Cherry, a University of Michigan researcher studying the subject for the Great Lakes Commission.

"It's an unknown, so there's a huge amount of risk," Cherry said. "Everybody would like to be the second program to do it. The first will be a regulatory trailblazer."

Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Ireland have installed offshore turbines, and Germany has approved nearly two dozen projects expected to go online soon. Denmark's largest wind farm has 80 turbines roughly 120 feet high, planted 8 to 12 miles off the coast.