Expert Forum: Risk of Collision between Marine Animals and Tidal Turbines

Expert Forum #2

Lead by Carol Sparling, SMRU Marine
December 16, 2014

Summary:
The risk to marine mammals, fish, and other animals from tidal turbines continues to be of concern to regulators and stakeholders, even though the scientific community considers that close interactions are likely to be extremely rare.  Observing collisions and near-turbine interactions in high-energy tidal areas is challenging; the development of predictive models and conceptual frameworks for defining interactions can be useful in furthering our understanding.  Our ability to create these models and analyze observational data in a consistent manner is further hampered by a lack of common definitions for what constitutes collision, evasion, and avoidance.

This forum focused on: reaching some consensus on defining interactions; discussing the scales over which these interactions occur; examining lessons learned from collisions of birds with wind turbines and exploring their applicability to collision with tidal turbines; and setting the stage for discussing the different sensory modalities and varying scales of associated behavioral actions that may govern the risk to marine animals from turbines.

The introductory slides presented by Carol Sparling are available here.

Experts who Participated in this Discussion Included (in order of appearance):

A video recording of the discussion has been posted below:

Past Events