CFF was contracted through Orsted Americas and Sunrise Wind to conduct a long-term habitat survey program within the Sunrise Wind Farm (SRWF) lease area to monitor the ecosystem before, during, and after construction. This survey program will run annually during the summer season from 2022 through the summer of 2026, utilizing CFF's HabCam v3 system. The HabCam monitoring approach is particularly well-suited to sampling within the lease area following construction, as it is an advanced, non-lethal sampling tool that is proven to have minimal impact on marine species and benthic habitats and poses negligible risks to protected species.

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Utilization of the HabCam survey equipment and protocols ensures that the data collected as part of this fisheries monitoring plan will be compatible and standardized with fisheries-independent data that is used to inform scallop science, stock assessment, and management. The images and metadata collected during surveys hold ancillary information such as species interactions, distribution of flora and fauna, temperature, salinity, and substrate type. Thus, each image captured during a HabCam v3 optical survey is essentially a complete, holistic snapshot of the environmental at a specific space in time.

Long-term Project Objectives:

• Evaluate changes in the relative abundance of scallops between SRWF and the reference control area pre-construction, during construction, and post-construction.

• Assess changes in the size structure of scallops between SRWF and the control areas pre-construction, during construction, and post-construction.

• For species that are imaged with sufficient frequency, investigate changes in the composition of fish and invertebrate species (e.g., skates, flounder, echinoderms, sponges) between SRWF and the control area pre-construction, during construction, and post-construction.

• Determine habitat types and analyze changes between SRWF and the control area pre-construction, during construction, and post-construction.