Abstract
In July 2010, fourteen adult northern gannets (Morus bassanus) from Bempton Cliffs, on the northeast coast of England, were fitted with satellite tags to investigate their foraging ranges during chick-rearing. This was the first time that such a study had been undertaken on gannets from the Bempton Cliffs nesting colony, which is a technically challenging site to work at. In particular, we were interested in finding out the likelihood of overlap with potential development zones for offshore wind energy generation in the North Sea. All fourteen tags provided data for between 13 and 84 days (mean = 49 days), indicating that most foraging trips from Bempton occurred within 50-100 km of the colony. Locations of tagged birds coincided with the Hornsea offshore wind energy zone in particular, with some birds recorded on Dogger Bank, a single recorded trip to the East Anglia zone, and a few recorded locations within the Greater Wash strategic area for wind energy generation. This study represents just one chick-rearing period, so it is unclear how representative the data are of foraging activity by breeding gannets from year to year.