2006, CMACS, Lincs, Desk Based Review of Fish Communities of the Wash

This series focuses on the fish species likely to be present within the Wash and which would therefore be subject to assessment for impacts from installation and operation of the wind farm export power cable. In addition, the presence of any important fish habitats such as spawning and nursery areas has also been identified along with any rare or protected fish species which may be found within the area. It was initially decided to undertake a series of detailed beam and otter trawls within the Wash to inform the Environment Impact Assessment. However, this was deemed as being too intrusive to the Wash Special Area of Conservation (SAC) by English Nature (EN). EN advised reviewing the available data for biological fish communities of the Wash in the first instance, and in particular, the long-term data set held by CEFAS for young fish surveys. EN further advised that data collection should only be considered if the existing data highlighted significant data gaps. It was therefore decided that this investigation would be entirely desk based drawing upon data from a variety of sources including the existing CEFAS young fish survey beam trawl data. It was found that the dominant species present were as expected for an area where the predominant habitat type is shallow sand substrates although the data was skewed towards demersal species due to the type of gear used for the CEFAS surveys. The distribution of fish species varies significantly on a small-scale basis over small time periods although a number of species also show distinct seasonal movements.