Understanding How Marine Renewable Device Operations Influence Fine Scale Habitat Use and Behaviour of Marine Vertebrates (RESPONSE)

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With the rapid development and imminent deployment of tidal and wave devices and the expansion of offshore wind power there is a pressing need to understand how marine wildlife is going to be affected by these developments. Existing regulations and mitigation measures are based on assumed effects. Lack of information means that the regulations may be either too onerous and recommended mitigation measures may be unnecessary or ineffective. There is a clear need to improve our understanding of how animals perceive and respond to devices and how these responses affect their behaviour, distribution and ultimately fitness.The RESPONSE project is a multi-disciplinary study focussing on causal links between marine renewable devices (MRD) and changes in the fine-scale distribution and behaviour of marine vertebrates. The overall aim of the project is to identify and quantify actual risk of negative consequences and therefore remove one key layer of uncertainty in the scale of risk to the industry and natural environment. The main objectives are to:1. understand how stakeholders see the risks to the industry and to the environment.2. measure the fine scale distribution of marine wildlife in high tidal and wave energy sites to understand how seals, cetaceans, birds and large fish use such areas.3. characterise acoustic, visual and electromagnetic signals that MRDs produce and assess the reactions of marine wildlife to those cues.4. use the results in habitat preference models to infer zones of influence and avoidance associated with MRDs at both small and large scales.5. develop effective mitigation methods We will achieve these objectives through a set of inter-related sub projects that will:-1. bring together a UK wide group of regulators, conservation groups and industry to assess the perception of risk to the industry and environment posed by negative interactions with marine wildlife. 2. use novel, high resolution GPS transmitters for seals and state of the art passive acoustics, active sonar and visual observation techniques for porpoises, seabirds and fish to record details of their habitat use and behaviour in and around operational wave and tidal test sites and an un-developed high energy tide site. These studies will be co-ordinated with FLOWBEC, another NERC/Defra funded project monitoring the physical characteristics of the marine environment at these high energy sites3. carryout a programme of physical measurements to characterise the outputs of MRDs that have a potential to cause disturbance to marine wildlife. 4. carry out a series of controlled exposure/behaviour response trials with captive seals and with wild free ranging seals and porpoises. 5. use visual and acoustic observation data and the operating schedules of existing MRDs to assess the responses of seabirds to MRD operations. The results of 1 to 5 will be used to describe the effects of MRDs on individual animals over the short term, i.e. how they react to the stimuli, and over the medium to long term, i.e. how they change their movements and behaviour in response to exposure to the stimuli. These results will be used as direct input to the EBAO project, another NERC/Defra funded project modeling the potential impacts of large scale arrays of MRDs. This project will provide a step change in knowledge about the existence and importance of adverse effects of MRDs and provide an ability to predict impacts of