North Sea coastal zone

Fish behaviour

Acoustic tracking systems; labelling tags; tracking tags; beam trawls; passive fishing gear

This study focuses on the behaviour of fish in response to the operation of the wind farm. Wind farms can have either negative or positive effects on fish, for instance by disturbance due to noise or by acting as a refuge because fisheries are banned within the wind farm. An important feature to determine if positive effects might occur is residence time. The longer individual fish spend in the wind farm, the stronger potential benefit of wind farms can be expected. To our knowledge this is the first study on individual behaviour of fish within wind farms. To study the potential effects of wind farms on fish behaviour, we used two approaches: tagging experiments using Peterson disc tags (mark-recapture) and telemetry experiments by following individual fish with small transmitters (VEMCO) in time. We selected two target fish species that are important for fisheries: sole Solea vulgaris as a target species potentially representing fish that use sand habitats and Atlantic cod Gadus morhua as a target species potentially representing fish that use artificial reefs such as the monopile and scour bed habitats in the wind farm. For the tagging experiment, sole was collected with a beam trawl and for the telemetry cod was caught using fishing-rods.

IMARES (2013) contact NoordzeeWind,

Wageningen Marine Research, IJmuiden
Haringkade 1
IJmuiden

1976 CP
Netherlands