New £2.7 million technology beneath the waves is listening to mammals to create a live map of their behaviour.
Launched by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, Celtic Sea Power and the University of Exeter in the Celtic Sea, the project aims to reveal the impact of floating offshore equipment on marine life once and for all.
Professor Matthew Witt, Associate Professor in the Natural Environment at the University of Exeter, said: “This project is pivotal. Previously, lots of small-scale surveys have looked at how animals could respond to large engineering projects. However, many have failed to recognise that animals live on a large geographical scale.
“As wind farms increase in number and size, it’s vital to assess their potential effects on the environment, at the scale of which these animals actually exist, rather than in small areas of water that they could occupy at any one time.”
The teams say the use of smart technology to gain environmental data could potentially speed up consenting processes across the UK if this approach was more widely adopted, since current consenting processes for major infrastructure projects like offshore wind farms are lengthy and complex.
Professor Witt also expressed that by having the long term project, they “hope to provide a strong evidence base for people to make informed decisions about how these farms could be built and how they’re operated.”
The project and wider programme aim to address existing evidence gaps and support accelerated decision making, enabling the UK to hit offshore deployment targets.
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