Offshore renewable energy projects – commercial fisheries assessment in environmental impact assessment (EIA): supplementary guidance for applicants

Offshore renewable energy projects – commercial fisheries assessment in environmental impact assessment (EIA): supplementary guidance for applicants

Overview

This supplementary guidance should be used by prospective applicants when preparing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) scoping reports for offshore renewable energy project applications. It can also guide undertaking EIA and preparing an EIA report. This supplementary guidance contains general information on data and appropriate methods which may be useful to all prospective applicants.

This supplementary guidance is not intended to be comprehensive guidance for undertaking an EIA on impacts on commercial fisheries, but is aimed at topics for which standing advice will provide efficiencies. The purpose of this supplementary guidance is to assist prospective applicants in preparing applications and to increase levels of consistency across assessments of effects on commercial fisheries, providing applicants with confidence that they’re submitting the correct information in the required format, as well as aiming to minimise the requirement for additional information. It will also be of interest to the commercial fisheries sector, as it aims to improve the quality and consistency of commercial fisheries impact assessments.

The datasets and information outlined below do not form an exhaustive list and should be used alongside any other available information when carrying out the assessment.

This supplementary guidance compliments Marine Directorate guidance on ‘Social and Economic Statements of Impact (SESI)’. The SESI guidance clarifies that a socio-economic impact assessment is not expected to form part of an EIA and a statement is to be submitted to MD-LOT separately. This supplementary guidance clarifies that assessment of socio-economic impacts on commercial fisheries is to be included within the commercial fisheries chapter of an EIA.

The study area

The study area should be selected to ensure that all potential effects on each commercial fishery present can be assessed. Further information on identifying a suitable commercial fishery study area can be found within the Marine Directorate’s fisheries displacement guidance.

The baseline

An assessment of the baseline fishing activity within the identified study area that may be affected by a proposed project should be carried out. A variety of data is available to establish the commercial fisheries baseline (for example landing statistics, Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data, Automatic Identification System (AIS) data etc.). A minimum of five years’ data should be used to establish a baseline for the majority of the fishing industry, with a minimum of seven years’ data being more suitable for nomadic fisheries with long-term cyclical variation, such as the scallop dredge fishery. Supplementary data, such as plotter data provided by fishers, may be required on a project-specific basis to inform the baseline. Plotter data is a form of personal data under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore sharing it with applicants or anyone else is at the discretion of the individual fisher who owns the data. Plotter data must therefore be aggregated and anonymised if it is to be used and published (for example in an EIA report). The fisheries displacement guidance includes a list of recommended data sources that can be used for assessing fisheries displacement. These data sources can also be used as a starting point for assessing the baseline. Further information on certain datasets mentioned in the displacement guidance, as well as detailing newer data sets that have since been made available, is included in this supplementary guidance. VMS data for the under 12 metre fleet are not currently available and it may be difficult to establish an accurate baseline of fishing activity for these vessels. The 2014 Scotmap data are discussed in the fisheries displacement guidance. However, Scotmap data should not be solely relied upon to provide information on the commercial fisheries baseline for the inshore fleet, as these data are not up to date. This dataset should only be used to validate information gathered through consultation with local fishers and other relevant stakeholders. The Scottish Government has published gridded fisheries data for under 12 metre vessels (2018-2022) split by gear type, which may help to inform the commercial fisheries baseline for smaller vessels. These data are available as heat map layers on Marine Scotland Maps and can also be downloaded via Spatialdata.gov.scot. The layers can be quickly accessed from the links at the bottom of this page: Fishing - Activity data and statistics | Marine Scotland Information.

The UK’s Marine Management Organisation (MMO) surveillance sightings should not be relied upon to inform the baseline because of sampling bias (due to risk-based taskings leading to uneven survey effort in Scotland), so may not give an accurate representation of fishing activity in the study area and should not, therefore, be relied upon to inform the baseline. It can, however, be used to give an indication of the nationality of vessels present in the area, or to corroborate information from other sources.

AIS data provided by European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) should be used to inform the baseline for all fishing vessels of 15 metres or more in length. This dataset gives data on the amount of time spent by fishing vessels in a location (under “vessel density”). This can provide both a useful way to visualise fishing activity spatially and a better indication of fishing intensity than AIS “route density” data, as it weights the movement of a vessel through a grid square with how long the vessel has stayed in that square and how much of the square it has covered.

When using MMO VMS datasets to produce spatial maps of fishing activity, data should be used to create figures showing both average VMS value and fishing effort (kW per hour). Areas of high effort may not necessarily equate to areas of high value, so fishing activity should be visualised using both indices. This will provide further information about the baseline and help in the assessment of possible displacement of fishing effort. The fisheries sensitivity maps and associated webtool from the Fisheries Sensitivity Mapping and Displacement Modelling (FiSMaDiM) project should be used to inform the baseline. This new dataset may also be useful for assessing fisheries displacement. Case Study - Cefas (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science) for project outputs and webtool.

Impact assessment

The EIA Scoping Report should identify the potential effects on each commercial fishery present in the study area at each phase of the project (for example pre-construction, construction, operation and maintenance and decommissioning). Potential effects may include, but are not limited to:

• restricted access to, or exclusion from, fishing grounds (temporary or permanent)
• displacement to other fishing grounds (temporary or permanent)
• increased steaming times, due to the need to fish alternative grounds or because of deviations in routes to avoid project construction zones and infrastructure (temporary or permanent)
• disruption of fishing activity caused by increased vessel traffic and vessel anchoring (temporary or permanent)
• safety issues, such as gear snagging on infrastructure
• effects on commercially important fish and shellfish populations

The EIA Scoping Report should describe which effects will be scoped in and which will be scoped out of the EIA, with sufficient justification.

Information on the planned methods to be used to assess effects should be provided, including methods for cumulative impact assessment and transboundary impact assessment. The cumulative effects assessment should take any nearby Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and other fisheries management areas with restricted fishing activity into account as potential factors that could cause cumulative effects for commercial fisheries. A fisheries displacement assessment should be carried out as part of the EIA assessment. Refer to the ‘Good practice guidance for assessing fisheries displacement by other licensed marine activities’ (Scottish Government, 2022) for further information on how to do this.

Socioeconomic impacts to on commercial fisheries

EIA reports/ Environmental Statements are no longer expected to have socio-economic impact assessment chapters. This information is being requested separately through a SESI. Applicants are now expected to include an assessment of direct social and economic impacts on commercial fishing within the Commercial Fisheries chapter of the EIA.

Applicants should complete an assessment of the potential socio-economic impacts as they relate to the baseline of fishing activity within the study area. As a minimum, applicants should consider any direct socio-economic impacts that materialise as a result of the potential effects being assessed within the EIA. Direct impacts here relate to the immediate socio-economic consequence of the change being assessed, i.e. the construction and operation of the proposed project. Typically, this would involve the applicant constructing a counterfactual, which may be a continuation of the baseline, and assessing the potential socio-economic impacts of the proposed project, to this counterfactual. These direct impacts might include changes in revenues or costs, changes in catch per unit effort, changes in landing value and increases in economic vulnerability. For example, changes in operating costs due to changes in vessel behaviour, such as increased steaming times or displacement. The process for completing this section of the EIA will differ depending on the nature of the project.

The socio-economic impact assessment should be conducted on the unmitigated effects of the project (i.e. prior to mitigation being factored in). Where assumptions are made within the impact assessment that fishing will resume after construction, whether within the project boundary or displaced elsewhere, the commercial viability of that fishing activity should be considered and included in the assessment of the magnitude of an impact.

Direct impacts of the proposed project on fishing operations, for example displacement or disruption to fishing activity and impacts on operating costs, should be captured in the commercial fisheries assessments of the EIA. Social and economic impacts that go beyond the study area, for example impacts on onshore supply chain and processing, onshore facilities, or fishing dependent communities, will be included in the SESI.

A useful dataset for understanding fisher’s costs is 2024 Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet — Seafish. This can be explored using the Fleet Enquiry Tool | Tableau Public. Economic impacts are also displayed as a list of fisheries sensitivity indicators in the FiSMaDiM project report which can also be used to assess potential impacts.

Applicants should explore what data and evidence is most appropriate for the economic and social impacts. In some circumstances, stakeholder engagement and wider expert consultation may be appropriate. In considering the direct socio-economic impacts in the study area, applicants should:

• provide justification for the inclusion or exclusion of any potential impacts related to commercial fisheries
• describe the impacts across all stages of the project
• detail the data sources used when compiling evidence for the assessment, and the approach taken in the consideration of potential impacts
• describe the commercial viability of fishing activity following the project – this can link into the section on mitigation and monitoring

Mitigation and monitoring

Please refer to the Marine Directorate guidance on Fisheries Mitigation, Monitoring and Communication Plans

Links to other relevant guidance

Scottish Government Assessing fisheries displacement by other licensed marine activities: good practice guidance

Historic Environment Scotland, NatureScot 2018 Environmental Impact Assessment Handbook

Scottish Government guidance on Fisheries Mitigation, Monitoring and Communication Plans in Marine licensing and consenting: offshore renewable energy projects

Fishing Liaison with Offshore Wind and Wet Renewables Group (FLOWW) Best Practice Guidance for Offshore Renewables Developments: Recommendations for Fisheries Liaison

Collaborative Offshore Wind Research into the Environment (COWRIE) Options and Opportunities for Marine Fisheries Mitigation Associated with Windfarms

Offshore windfarms - monitoring impacts on the commercial fishing industry: good practice guidance - gov.scot

Marine projects – social and economic statement of impact: guidance for applicants