GOVERNMENT

Management of our coasts and seas is becoming increasingly important as a wider range of industries and users compete for space and wildlife and environmental concerns have to be taken into account. As marine spatial planning becomes more routine, the requirement for sound strategic advice based on the latest scientific data is vital.

SMRU Consulting provides input to Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA), advice on marine mammal survey and monitoring, development of risk assessment frameworks, and input to appropriate assessments to assist government with decision making in relation to marine development. In North America, we assisted NOAA in the NRDA as part of the exploration of the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on endangered marine life such as bottlenose dolphins.

 Some example project experience is summarised below:

  • Natural Resources Wales Guidance for survey and monitoring of marine mammals: This report provides a framework for assessing risk to marine mammals from wave and tidal stream developments and guidance on how to tailor survey efforts to provide better information to inform impact assessments. The step-by-step guide helps provide a ‘roadmap’ for making decisions about the need for, and type of, pre-application surveys.

  • Crown Estate Monitoring Guidance for marine mammals: We produced monitoring guidance for marine mammals at marine renewable energy developments. This work examined the various approaches available to developers of marine renewable energy projects for collecting data about marine mammal distribution and abundance in relation to offshore development. It includes an assessment of the statistical power available per unit cost and the types of uncertainties expected to exist in the data, making a list of recommendations for developers, regulators and advisers.

  • Offshore Wind Farm Post consent monitoring review: We worked with Fugro EMU, the National Physics Laboratory (NPL) and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to conduct a comprehensive review of the post consent monitoring carried out at all consented UK wind farms. The objective was to examine how the data collected during post-consent monitoring at offshore wind farms have provided evidence for impacts and to review whether the post-consent monitoring was appropriate and fit for purpose and make recommendations for future monitoring.

  • Interim PCoD framework: Working with John Harwood we developed a statistical model, the iPCoD approach, for assessing and quantifying the potential consequences for marine mammal populations of any disturbance and/or injury that may result from offshore energy developments.

  • Development of Cook Inlet Beluga PCoD Framework: Noise is a stressor of high concern to Cook Inlet beluga and recovery plans include the need for assessment tools addressing whether noise is likely to be limiting recovery of the CI beluga population. We conducted an expert elicitation and adapted the interim PCoD framework for beluga whales.

For more information on our experience in this sector, please see our blog and publications.