When it comes to addressing the gaps in scientific knowledge about the ecological and ecosystem impacts of offshore wind infrastructure, environmental assessment is key. This supports the development of evidence-based and robust regulatory procedures and policies. One such project established with the aim to meet this challenge is the Physics-to-Ecosystem Level Assessment of Offshore windfarms (PELAgIO) project, a UK-based research initiative to understand how windfarm infrastructure, energy extraction and climate change affect marine environments at multiple levels - from basic ocean mixing and plankton productivity, to the behavior of top predators including marine mammals and seabirds.
One of the PELAgIO case study sites is at the Seagreen windfarm in North-East Scotland. With 114 turbines, it’s Scotland’s largest windfarm, and is also the world’s deepest fixed bottom wind farm with its turbines standing in depths of 42 - 58 metres. In a 2024 study to assess the movement of marine life around the windfarm, the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) deployed a Sonardyne Origin 600 Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) with echosounder mode enabled to simultaneously monitor tidal cycles, currents, wave heights and biological activity for a 51-day period.
The echosounder data revealed a range of phenomena, including schools of fish, diving birds, internal waves and water upwelling. In this paper we present data showing how both water movement and marine life were captured, and by combining this with current and wave data from the ADCP, demonstrate a comprehensive combined hydrodynamic and ecological assessment of the area surrounding the windfarm.
Further details on the site, instrumentation deployment, data collection and analysis, and application are also included in this paper.