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

1 Introduction and Background

1.1 Introduction

Over the last decade, Scotland has almost doubled its Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) generation. In 2022, the installed capacity of offshore wind generation in Scotland was 2 gigawatts (GW), which represents 16% of the United Kingdom’s (UK) installed offshore wind capacity^[3] (Scottish Government, 2023a). Due to the continued development of offshore windfarms (OWF) in Scotland, it is anticipated that there will be several potential impacts on the commercial fishing industry^[4] in relation to OWFs.

Effective monitoring is essential to understand and measure these impacts. Scotland’s National Marine Plan (NMP) recognises the cultural and economic importance of the commercial fishing industry, together with the need to address potential co-existence between marine industries as outlined in General Policy 4 (GEN 4) of the NMP^[5] (Scottish Government, 2015). Furthermore, 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 namely: the evidence gap identified by the ScotMER Fish and Fisheries Receptor Group^[6], ‘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^[7] ‘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 closing these evidence gaps.

This Guidance provides principles for effective monitoring of the potential fisheries’ impacts of OWFs and other offshore renewables on the commercial fishing industry. It includes a list of recommended monitoring datasets and key points for consideration when conducting monitoring. This Guidance intends to make recommendations for good practice. It has been informed by stakeholder engagement, a Rapid Literature Review and a Dataset Analysis Report (see Appendix A and Appendix B). Commercial fisheries monitoring is important as it:

• Builds an understanding of baseline information, changes in fishing activity and socio-economic impacts; and
• Validates predicted impacts, assesses the effectiveness of mitigation measures, and/or identifies unforeseen impacts.

The Guidance is owned by the Scottish Government and shall be kept under review and updated when deemed necessary to ensure that the information contained within remains fit for purpose.

1.2 Definition of Monitoring

For the purposes of this Guidance, the term ‘monitoring’ is defined as assessment of impacts on the commercial fishing industry of all project stages, including baseline, validation or evaluation of predicted impacts (i.e., auditing).

1.3 Objectives

The purpose of this Guidance is to:

1. Assess existing datasets based on knowledge gathered within the Rapid Literature Review (Appendix A), the Dataset Analysis Report (Appendix B), and during stakeholder engagement;

2. Recommend how existing fisheries and socio-economic data can best be used for monitoring purposes, and recommend a standardised methodology for monitoring impacts on the commercial fisheries sector, enabling the long-term collection of reliable and standardised data throughout the lifespan of projects; and

3. Present a case study illustrating how monitoring can be achieved in practice.

1.4 How to Use This Guidance

This Guidance provides principles to ensure that monitoring approaches can be tailored to reflect location and design-specific sensitivities of projects or proposals.

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 Good Practice Guidance is described in Section 3, where Section 3.6 provides recommended monitoring datasets and outlines key considerations for conducting monitoring and disseminating outputs, and Section 3.2 provides a step-by-step guide on planning and conducting commercial fisheries monitoring.

This Guidance is primarily intended to be used by developers. The guidance can be used at all stages of a project, including during the Scoping and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) stages of OWF development to determine commercial fisheries monitoring practices upfront in the process, where needed and post construction during the operational phase. Although this Guidance is targeted for OWFs, it is also designed to be applicable to a range of other marine activities, such as tidal, wave, oil and gas, and aquaculture, as well as feeding into marine spatial planning, and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Relevant other Guidance to be used alongside this document can be found in Appendix D.

The Guidance does not stipulate whether monitoring is required for a particular project or not, it is intended to be used as a guide to inform conditions that may require monitoring to be undertaken where the regulator considers this to be both effective and necessary. This Guidance can be used where it has been decided to undertake monitoring. Proposed monitoring measures should be set out within Environmental Impact Assessment Reports (EIAR) or relevant fisheries monitoring plans, in order to help understand baseline information and predict impacts, validate predicted impacts, understand the effectiveness of mitigation measures, or identify unforeseen impacts. Consideration of monitoring at an early stage should inform any long-term monitoring.

The baseline and assessment of predicted effects presented within the commercial fisheries EIAR chapter should be developed to align with the principles set out in this Guidance. This will ensure that commercial fisheries monitoring is as effective as possible. However, this document does not provide detailed guidance for the Scoping or EIA processes (e.g. detailed EIA baseline or impact assessment process).

Although the geographical extent of the guidance mostly applies to Scotland, it could also be applicable to the rest of the UK. This Guidance is specifically aimed at monitoring the potential impacts on the commercial fisheries sector and the knock-on potential socio-economic impacts on the commercial fishing industry, but does not consider monitoring of ecological impacts on target species.

Adherence to this Guidance is not a regulatory requirement, however, it may be used to assist in complying with relevant requirements related to commercial fisheries monitoring, where applicable.

The abbreviations and acronyms can be found in Appendix G. The glossary can be found in Appendix H.

1.5 Methodology

The project titled ‘Monitoring Offshore Windfarm Impacts on the Commercial Fishing Industry’ was undertaken by Xodus Group from November 2023 to October 2024. The development of the Good Practice Guidance incorporated various methodologies, including a Rapid Literature Review (Appendix A), a Dataset Analysis Report (Appendix B), and iterative Stakeholder Engagement (Appendix C).

The Rapid Literature Review covers commercial fisheries monitoring in relation to offshore industries in Scotland and other countries with the intention of comparing the practices in different places (Appendix A). The Dataset Analysis Report was also produced to provide a comprehensive review of datasets relevant to monitoring of commercial fisheries in Scotland (Appendix B).

Stakeholder engagement was conducted twice to inform this Guidance document. The initial engagement sessions aimed to identify the potential impacts stakeholders deemed important for monitoring and assess the feasibility of such monitoring. The subsequent engagement rounds were held to present the draft guidance and gather feedback. Engagement sessions were conducted with fishing industry organisations representing commercial fishing vessels, rather than individual fishers, to mitigate stakeholder fatigue within the commercial fishing sector. A summary of the stakeholder engagement is provided in Appendix C.