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DOE Project

Project lead: Liese Siemann, Tasha O'Hara, Farrell Davis, and Luisa Garcia

Partners: Mass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science & Technology and Kitware, Inc.

Funded by: The Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

​​This research project is designed to evaluate the impacts of offshore wind development on commercial fish species and benthic habitats and communities using a suite of state-of-the-art, non-lethal survey tools including an open cod-end video trawl, a towed off-bottom optical survey vehicle, and anchored and ropeless stationary camera systems. The project will provide data on changes in commercial fish and marine invertebrate abundance and distribution, and the relationship of both to habitat changes, the presence of new structures (turbine bases), and changing underwater noise levels. We expect this research to address the challenges of offshore wind development competition with other ocean needs like fishery-independent surveys used for management.

​CFF has partnered with multiple highly experienced groups to successfully complete this project. Scientists from the Stokesbury laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) will conduct video trawl surveys using a system in development since 2013. Their video trawl has been used to survey groundfish stocks in wind energy areas and on important scallop grounds. Of critical importance for this effort, it is towed behind commercial trawl vessels that are capable of working in turbine fields when necessary. Automated detectors for imagery from optical surveys will be developed in collaboration with Kitware, Inc., the developers of Video and Image Analytics for Marine Environments (VIAME), an open-source platform for analysis of underwater imagery, created with initial support from the NOAA Automated Image Analysis Strategic Initiative. VIAME has been used on imagery from HabCam surveys led by CFF and NEFSC and baited video imagery from surveys led by CFF and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center. CFF is also partnering with multiple commercial fishing companies to guarantee that the project has the support of this key group. CFF has a strong working relationship with mobile and fixed gear fishers after more than a decade of collaborative research projects.

Read the DOE press release

survey gear from summary slide

Study survey gear. (A) HabCam v3 vehicle and image mosaic. (B) Video trawl schematic and view toward the open cod end. (C) Baited stationary camera system and image captures.

Project survey extent which encompasses the MA/RI wind lease areas.

Project survey extent.jpg

Project updates

The first project research trip was completed in June 2024. This trip focused on reducing sediment clouds in the video collected by the SMAST video trawl. Modifying the net by adding a 17-ft extension significantly reduced turbidity and improved the video quality.

Improvement in image quality with the net extension. (A) Image from the 2018 survey using a standard-length net. (B) Image from the June 2024 trip using the elongated net.

Offshore Wind

​Ørsted Project

Project leads: Tasha O'Hara, Luisa Garcia, Liese Siemann, and Farrell Davis

Collaborators: Arnie's Fisheries, Orsted Americas

Funded by: Ørsted, Sunrise Wind

​​This research project is designed to evaluate the impacts of offshore wind development on commercial fish species and benthic habitats and communities using a suite of state-of-the-art, non-lethal survey tools including an open cod-end video trawl, a towed off-bottom optical survey vehicle, and anchored and ropeless stationary camera systems. The project will provide data on changes in commercial fish and marine invertebrate abundance and distribution, and the relationship of both to habitat changes, the presence of new structures (turbine bases), and changing underwater noise levels. We expect this research to address the challenges of offshore wind development competition with other ocean needs like fishery-independent surveys used for management.

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.

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.

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