Developing a risk assessment tool to forecast the impacts of offshore wind farms on marine fish at all life stages

Funding agency: The Institute of Marine Research, North Sea Program.
Project period: 2024-2028
Project leader: Howard Browman and Alessandro Cresci
Co-investigators: Guosong Zhang, Anne Berit Skiftesvik, Caroline Durif

Project deliverables
1) Identification of the species of fish that will be vulnerable to OW impacts. Candidate species are cod, haddock, herring, mackerel, saithe, sandeel, among others.
2) Quantification of the distance at which fish will be able to detect future OW farms, and the magnitude of the effects of the exposure.
3) Characterization of the type of behavioral response (attraction/repulsion..) that fish will have in presence of the noise and electromagnetic fields from the turbines.
4) Quantification of the proportion of the populations of fish that will be impacted of future OW farms.
5) Forecast the spatial and temporal scales of changes of species distributions caused by wind turbines. Forecast of potential aggregations or migrations caused by future OW farms.
6) Apply the preceding to compare areas targeted for OW development in a risk assessment framework. That is, Identification of which area will have minimum-maximum impact.