Abstract
Commercial viability of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) is progressing but no national or international monitoring standards have been established for wave or tidal energy sites. Standardized monitoring within and across MRE sectors is necessary to expedite project permitting/consenting, detect environmental impacts, and enable comparison among sites and technologies. Acoustic backscatter from a bottom-deployed platform at a pilot wave energy site off Newport, Oregon was compared to data collected at a tidal turbine site in Admiralty Inlet, Washington. Metrics that describe fish and macrozooplankton densities and vertical distributions derived from acoustic backscattered energy were compared using wavelets and Autoregressive Moving Average models (ARMA). Average density and vertical distribution values significantly differed between sites. Metrics of density and location in the water column displayed diel (24 h) and tidal (12 h) cycles. Dispersion of animals in the water column varied at 64- and 128-h periods at both sites. Applicability of methods in both sectors suggests that a standard approach to biological monitoring is possible. Stationary acoustics and analytic methods presented here can be used to characterize pre-installation conditions and refine post-installation monitoring to site-specific characteristics to ensure cost-effective detection of impacts associated with MRE development.
Highlights
EFFECTS of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) wave and tidal development and operation on biological communities remain uncertain [1]–[3], and the ecology of many MRE sites has been traditionally understudied due to dynamic environmental conditions
We investigated the dynamics of marine animals living in the water column at two sites that have been selected for testing and developing MRE from tidal currents and waves in the United States (Fig. 1)
Location of organisms in the water column was, on average, higher off bottom at the wave site than at the tidal site but there were no significant differences in the dispersion from the mean location between sites
Summary
EFFECTS of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) wave and tidal development and operation on biological communities remain uncertain [1]–[3], and the ecology of many MRE sites has been traditionally understudied due to dynamic environmental conditions. As part of the permitting/consenting process, biological characterization of pre-installation conditions (e.g. abundance, diversity, and fluctuations of biological communities), and post-installation monitoring that ensures detection of change in biological attributes are mandatory conditions for every MRE project. Environmental monitoring plans are industry sector, site, and project specific. No standard monitoring requirements exist for wave or tidal energy projects in the world. This makes it difficult to assess environmental impacts (i.e. detection of change above a threshold), impedes permitting/consenting, and hampers industry development [5], [6]. Standardized monitoring goals and methods would expedite project development, enable assessment of MRE device effects on the environment, and facilitate comparisons of impacts among sites and sectors to evaluate if changes are site/device specific
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