Abstract
An operational noise assessment was conducted on the Pelamis P2 system at the Billia Croo EMEC wave energy site in May 2011 by a consortium of Loughborough University, Chickerell BioAcoustics, the National Physical Laboratory and SMRU Ltd. The work is part of a contract from the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), Orkney, Scotland to develop an underwater noise measurement methodology for use at the EMEC wave energy test centre. As such the consortium above had developed a provisional measurement methodology based on data from a baseline noise survey (July 2010) [EMEC, 2011a] and review of related materials including previous acoustic work conducted on wave energy systems, likely biological receptors and measurement standards from other industries [EMEC, 2011b]. Trials were then conducted on a Pelamis P2 system in May 2011 with the aim of validating the proposed methodology, these data being used to update and revise the methodology based on lessons learnt [EMEC, 2011c].
In conducting the validation trials a detailed acoustic survey of the Pelamis P2 system was carried out. The aim of this document is to provide a summary of data collected and analyses carried out. Data collected includes long term acoustic data from autonomous recorder units placed on the seabed, wideband boat based drift deployments, CTD casts and analysis of device positional data, weather and oceanographical data.