Where would the fishing effort go?
A map based answer to the question review panels ask about offshore wind projects: displaced to where?
Offshore wind and fisheriesDo it for youAIS vessel trackingBioeconomic modellingSpatial analysisR
Challenge
Review panels assessing offshore wind projects press on the fishery impact section with one question, displaced to where. Teams that answered with a sentence got silence and further scrutiny.
What we built
- A review of the project details and the environmental reports.
- An analysis of fishing effort in and around the project sites, using AIS vessel tracking data, to show where boats actually fish.
- A bioeconomic displacement model that simulates alternative fishing grounds and weighs their costs and revenues.
The model builds on smartR, an R package for spatial modelling of fisheries published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution in 2020. Partica also contributes AIS ground stations to the VesselTracker network.
The same approach was applied again in a second, independent offshore wind feasibility study for a different client, combining fishing activity analysis, cartography and bioeconomic modelling.
Outcome
In the review, the team turned the screen around and showed the map instead of answering in words. There were no follow up questions. Reviewers back the answer they can check, not the one that sounds most confident.