Retiring Risks of MRE Environmental Interactions to Support Consenting/Permitting

       

OES Environmental & ORJIP Workshop: Retiring Risks of MRE Environmental Interactions to Support Consenting/Permitting

OES-Environmental (formerly Annex IV) and ORJIP held a workshop on retiring risks of effects on marine animals from electromagnetic fields (EMF) and underwater noise from marine energy devices. This workshop was held in Naples, Italy, at the Centro Congressi della Stazione Marittima di Napoli, following EWTEC 2019. The purpose of the workshop was to examine pathways for determining data needs, monitoring requirements, and possible mitigation measures for working towards retiring risks of EMF and underwater noise for consenting small installations of tidal turbines and wave energy converters.

The output of the workshop will contribute to the 2020 OES-Environmental State of the Science report, and to ORJIP position papers on requirements for consenting tidal and wave devices.

 

Workshop Documents

Risk Retirement Workshop Report

 

Workshop Materials

In advance of the workshop, participants were asked to come prepared by reading the below referenced documents:

  1. EWTEC Workshop Slidedeck, explains the process of the risk retirement pathway, as well as presents studies related to the underwater noise and electromagnetic field (EMF) stressors.
  2. Two tables providing information about the monitoring and research studies highlighted in the slide deck as well as additional relevant studies (Noise Literature Table and EMF Literature Table). Each study (row) comes with a link to the full article / report (“Document Link”) and another link to a shorter condensed document on Tethys (“Tethys Metadata Link”).
  3. Two PDF files summarizing the underwater noise thresholds used by U.S. regulators (NOAA-NMFS Marine Mammals Hearing Thresholds (2018) and BOEM Fish Hearing Thresholds (2013)).
  4. Links to the April and May OES-Environmental webinars on Data Transferability (Data Transferability Regulatory Workshop Slides) and Risk Retirement (Risk Retirement Regulator Workshop Slides).

The workshop started with an introduction to the risk retirement pathway and a presentation of the current knowledge on underwater noise and EMF related to MRE converters. The participants where then divided into two groups to address each stressor separately.