2005, Brown & May Marine Ltd, Walney & West of Duddon Sands Offshore Wind Farm, Baseline Commercial Fisheries

Description

The following project describes the baseline commercial fishing within areas relevant to the proposed Walney and West Duddon Offshore Wind Farms taking account of the FEPA, CPA , DEFRA and CEFAS requirements outlined in the 2004 Guidelines.  For the purposes of this assessment, commercial fishing is defined as any fishing activity legitimately undertaken and declared for tax assessment.

There is no single data source or recognised model for accurately quantifying the levels and values of commercial fishing within small discrete sea areas such as the combined areas of the Walney and West Duddon wind farm sites.  Furthermore, the collection and recording of national fisheries data by ICES rectangle is primarily for the monitoring and control of fishing effort and catches over relatively large sea areas, and therefore involves the use of area units for recording data substantially larger than the areas of wind farms.