Abstract
Effective monitoring is essential to understand the impacts that Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs) and other marine sectors may have on the commercial fishing industry. The importance of monitoring the potential impacts of OWFs on the commercial fishing industry is reflected in two Scottish Marine Energy Research (ScotMER) evidence maps: the evidence gap identified by the ScotMER Fish and Fisheries Receptor Group, ‘monitoring of commercial fishing activity in the vicinity of OWFs and cables’ (FF.03 2022) and the evidence gap identified by the Socio-Economic Receptor Group ‘how can we improve the monitoring and evaluation (comparing predicted against monitored impacts) of socio-economic impacts?’ (S.07-2022). This Good Practice Guidance document (hereafter referred to as the/this “Guidance”) has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to contribute towards addressing these evidence gaps.
This Guidance provides principles for effective monitoring of the potential impacts of OWFs and other offshore industries on the commercial fishing industry. The Guidance does not stipulate whether monitoring is required or not; it is intended to be used as a guide to inform good practice where it has been decided to undertake monitoring. The Guidance is targeted to OWFs, but it is also designed to be applicable to a range of other marine activities, such as other tidal or wave energy projects, oil and gas, aquaculture, as well as feeding into marine spatial planning, and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
This Guidance should be used to identify appropriate monitoring datasets, to develop monitoring methodologies (e.g., techniques, data processing, frequency, and scale), and to identify the best means of disseminating monitoring outputs. The guidance also provides a step-by-step guide on planning and conducting commercial fisheries monitoring. We recommend an iterative approach which means that steps inform each other, information is built up over time, and some steps may be repeated or done in a different order (e.g. stakeholder engagement may be done earlier in the process).
- Steps 1 to 5 make up the ‘planning’ stage to formulate the monitoring plan and methodology
and should be considered when developing any outline monitoring proposals at an early stage
(e.g., pre-application/pre-consent, when monitoring proposals are set out within the EIAR, when creating outline fisheries related monitoring plans). Any monitoring proposals submitted during the planning stage should be further developed during subsequent stages of the project (steps 6 – 9), through engagement with relevant stakeholders. - Steps 6 and 7 represent the ‘monitoring’ stage and relate to data collection, analysis and reporting, and should be undertaken once the monitoring plan is finalised.
- Step 8 relates to ‘benchmarking’, which should be undertaken at agreed intervals once monitoring is underway to ensure the monitoring approach remains up to date.
- Step 9 relates to ‘evaluation’ which should be undertaken at the same time as benchmarking to ensure the monitoring approach remains effective and to provide a holistic assessment of the fisheries and socio-economic impacts of the proposal based on the monitoring results and in the context of the monitoring objectives and purpose.