EMEC/UKERC Workshop: Environmental Impacts and Monitoring of Marine Energy Conversion Devices

The following points emerged as the most important:

• There needs to be a link between physical modelling of devices and biological models or data sets
• The impact on sea-mammals, birds and fish should be urgently addressed
• Any Environmental Monitoring should be in 3 stages: before, during and after device installation, and each stage should ideally take place over at least 12 months to take into account seasonal effects. Time is not on the device developer’s side
• There is very little data available on the movement of birds and sea mammals, and nothing can be ascertained about their interactions with devices until in situ data/observations are made (e.g. at EMEC)
• Continuous monitoring is very expensive, time consuming and difficult. At present there is little funding available and what funding there is, is very difficult to release
• The boundaries of acceptability have to be defined to assist developers.
• There should be an agreed environmental monitoring programme that all developers are encouraged to follow at all sites (bearing in mind particular sensitivities of site)
• It is not clear what parameters should be measured and what is the best technology available for an environmental monitoring programme.
• A monitoring programme should concentrate on possible showstoppers for marine developers