Movements, migrations and space use of fish in the North Sea in relation to offshore wind farms Article Swipe
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· 2024
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.25682178.v1
· OA: W2914283667
No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.Important commercial fish species like plaice, cod and thornback rays have complex movement patterns characterised by seasonal migrations and distinct habitat preferences. A key knowledge gap for assessing the impact of marine renewable energy developments is how large-scale marine wind turbine arrays will affect fish migrations and space use because no large-scale, long-term ‘before-and-after’ study has been conducted to assess this prospect directly. Wind turbine arrays constructed across migratory routes or in essential habitat may lead to displacement of fish into sub-optimal habitats where they may either not be accessible to existing fishing fleets, or into areas that are more intensively exploited. We present an analysis of a unique set (>400) of electronic tag records collected from plaice (217), cod (96) and thornback rays (117) between 1993 and the late 2000s in southern North Sea areas that were free of large-scale wind farms at that time. The depth time series data have been analysed using a tidal geolocation method imbedded in a hidden Markov model (HMM) to reconstruct migration pathways and determine space use in relation to areas now occupied by Round 1 and 2 wind farms, and prior to development of large Round 3 sites. This analysis provides information that can be used, inter alia, for designing statistically robust 'post construction' studies to establish if and how windfarms have affected the migration pathways and patterns of space use for these species and how these in turn may impact fishery capture rates.
