Expert Forum: Monitoring around Tidal and Wave Arrays

Expert Forum #7

Lead by Andrea Copping, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
April 4, 2017

Summary:
There is limited monitoring of animal interactions around single wave and tidal devices and even less around arrays.  Currently, the only examples of array monitoring are from the limited acoustic monitoring around the five tidal turbines at the RITE project (New York, Verdant Power), and soon to be revealed monitoring around the MeyGen tidal turbines (Scotland). This forum is a preliminary discussion on monitoring around tidal arrays.

The following questions were asked to prompt discussion:

  • From what we know about animal interactions around single turbines, do we believe that monitoring around a single turbine in an array will provide sufficient insight into how animals will act around arrays?
  • The approach to monitoring around arrays will depend on the scale of the array: several machines, or many many.  How can we distinguish strategies for each scale?
  • What do we know about likely scenarios for development?:
    • Slow ramp up over time
    • Likelihood of very large arrays being consented and installed at once

The slides presented are available here.

Attendees of the forum included:

A video recording of the discussion has been posted below:

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