2007, Centre for Marine and Coastal Studies Ltd., (CMACS), Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm, Post-construction (Year 1) 2m Beam Trawl Survey

Description

Burbo Offshore Wind Farm is a twenty-five turbine, 90MW development
located in Liverpool Bay approximately 6km from the coastlines of Wirral,
Crosby and Liverpool.
A licence was issued to the wind farm developer, SeaScape Energy Ltd,
allowing them to construct and operate the wind farm providing certain
conditions are met. The licence (31864/07/0) was issued under the Food and
Environment Protection Act (FEPA) and contains specific requirements for
surveys of subtidal benthic (seabed) invertebrate ecology and fish. These are
in part addressed by an annual 2m scientific beam trawl survey which
complements other work, notably grab sampling and 4m (commercial) beam
trawl surveys.
The 2m beam trawl survey is undertaken by Centre for Marine and Coastal
Studies Ltd (CMACS) on behalf of SeaScape. The programme commenced
with a baseline (pre-construction) survey in autumn 2005 which built upon
surveys undertaken in 2002 in support of the project environmental impact
assessment. The report in this series presents the results of monitoring carried out in
autumn 2007, after construction of the wind farm, and compares the results
with baseline data and the data collected during construction of the wind farm
in 2006.