The effect of offshore windfarms on the distribution, behaviour, and abundance of fish

对海鸟种群影响的不确定性仍然是英国海上风电开发的一个关键问题，影响了实现英国能源安全战略目标所需的海上风电场部署的增加。海鸟受到碰撞、离开觅食地以及对迁徙路线或正常飞行路线的障碍影响的影响。这些影响的累积效应，其背后的潜在因果关系，以及随着时间的推移习惯化的程度，目前还没有很好的理解。由英国自然环境研究理事会和皇家财产局的海上风力证据和变化计划资助的一个新项目正在调查这些影响，该项目名为Ecowings。该项目旨在改变海上风力对关键海鸟物种的累积影响的现有证据基础，重点关注英国北海的一个地区，关键物种包括黑腿三趾鸥，普通海鸠，razorbill和大西洋海雀。这个博士将通过研究这些动物的鱼类猎物来为该项目做出贡献。OW农场（OWF）与其他人造海洋结构（MMS）一样，已知提供三维栖息地，至少聚集了鱼类和其他海洋生物，并且在一些MMS中，已被证明可以提高产量。与大多数MMS的情况一样，我们对鱼类在远离结构的距离上分布的程度知之甚少，对MMS网络（以OWF为代表）如何影响网络内外的行为和丰度知之甚少。该项目旨在研究OWF及其周围鱼类的分布，并利用无人水面航行器（USV）和自主水下航行器（AUV）等新型平台进行独特的测量。这些测量将与航空调查的海鸟调查同时进行。ECOWINGS数据集将提供，并从项目区分学生，学生将专注于推导鱼群回声描述符的指标，以了解海鸟分布的潜在影响。这些指标被归类为位置（学校深度，纬度，经度，日期和时间），形态（学校高度，宽度，面积，周长，粗糙度），精力充沛（声强度，这是成比例的密度，它的变化，质量中心），和学校环境（最小和最大深度下的学校，学校集群补丁大小）。这些已经被用来区分鱼群，但在这里将被用来研究如何学校的特点相同的物种是受捕食者遭遇。来自水面上未受干扰鱼群的AUV的数据集将特别适用于[海鸟]捕食者[鱼]猎物相互作用的研究，特别是对于黑腿三趾鸥等水面觅食海鸟。

Uncertainty around impacts on seabird populations remains a key consenting issue for offshore wind development in the UK, affecting progress towards the increase in deployment of offshore windfarms needed to meet the targets of the British Energy Security Strategy. Seabirds are impacted through collisions, displacement from feeding grounds, and barrier effects on migratory routes or regular flight paths. The cumulative effects of these impacts, the underlying causal relationships behind them, and the extent of habituation over time, are currently not well understood. These effects are being investigated by a new project, funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and The Crown Estate's Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme, called Ecowings. The project aims to transform the existing evidence base on the cumulative effects of offshore wind on key seabird species, focussing on a region of the UK North Sea, with key species including black-legged kittiwake, common guillemot, razorbill, and Atlantic puffin. This PhD will contribute to that project by studying the fish prey of these animals. OW farms (OWF), in common with other man-made marine structures (MMS), are known to provide three-dimensional habitat, which at the very least aggregates fish and other marine life, and in some MMS, has been shown to enhance production. As is the case with most MMS, we know little about the extent to which fish distribute themselves at distance from the structure, and less about how MMS networks, typified by OWF, can influence behaviour, and abundance in and outside the network. This project aims to examine the distributions of fish in and around OWF, making unique measurements with novel platforms such as Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). These measurements will be taken concurrently with seabird surveys from aerial surveys. The ECOWINGS datasets will be made available and, to distinguish the studentship from the project, the student will focus on deriving metrics of fish school echotrace descriptors to understand potential impacts on seabird distributions. These metrics are classed as positional (school depth, latitude, longitude, date, and time), morphometric (school height, width, area, perimeter, roughness), energetic (acoustic intensity, which is proportional to density, its variability, centre of mass), and school environment (minimum and maximum depth under the school, school cluster patch size). These have been used to distinguish fish schools, but here will be used to examine how the characteristics of schools of the same species are affected by predator encounters. The datasets derived from the AUV of undisturbed fish schools at the surface will be particularly pertinent for studies of [seabird] predator [fish] prey interactions, particularly for surface-feeding seabirds such as black-legged kittiwakes.