Abstract
The Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) and collaborators have completed the fourth year (months 37- 48) of the South Fork Wind Farm (SFWF) fisheries monitoring beam trawl survey, which represents the post-construction phase of this survey. The survey was conducted once per month within the South Fork Wind Farm development area as well as a nearby reference area. The survey gear consisted of a 3-m beam trawl outfitted with a 2.4 cm knotless nylon liner. For the first 20 months of the survey, three twenty-minute tows each in the SFWF development area, a Western reference area, and an Eastern reference area, for a total of nine tows per month, were sampled. However, due to differences in catch among areas, particularly for the Eastern area, and a lack of scallops caught in the SFWF area, the sampling design changed in the 21st month of the predevelopment survey. The updated design included an expansion of the impact sampling area within the SFWF area and sampling five twenty-minute tows each in the SFWF development area and the Western reference area, for a total of ten tows per month. For all tows, the entire catch was enumerated and weighed, and length/width measurements were taken of individual fish and selected invertebrate species. Stomach samples were collected from select commercially valuable fish species for prey composition analysis. Oceanographic conditions including salinity, water temperature, and weather conditions were recorded each haul. Preliminary results from the fourth year of sampling show the West area consistently had higher total numbers of organisms caught compared to the SFWF area. In addition, the West area appeared to be dominated by scallops and other miscellaneous invertebrates compared to the SFWF area, which was dominated by skates. These preliminary results will be compared to the pre-construction (years 1 and 2), construction (year 3) and post-construction (years 4 through 6) data in the future.