Abstract
Offshore wind development around Europe is increasing to meet the demands for renewable energy production to help meet climate change targets. It is known that marine birds such as red-throated divers (Gavia stellata) are highly sensitive to disturbance caused by the construction and operation of offshore wind farms and are subsequently displaced from areas used in the non-breeding season. But the physiological, energetic and demographic consequences of such effective habitat loss is currently unknown.
This report details the fourth and final field season of the Red-throated Diver Energetics Project, in 2021, when fieldwork was carried out in both Scotland and Finland.
Between 2018 and 2021, archival geolocator (GLS) and time depth recorder (TDR) tags were deployed and retrieved from red-throated divers breeding in Scotland, Finland and Iceland to quantify foraging behaviour and approximate non-breeding season locations. This empirical data will provide insight into the time divers spend foraging, thus providing insight into whether divers potentially have the capacity to accommodate displacement effects of offshore wind development.