Abstract
This report supplements the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Construction and Operations Plan.
Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC (Atlantic Shores) conducted opportunistic pre-construction boat-based acoustic bat surveys throughout the Lease Area (OCS-A 0499) on survey vessels in 2020 and 2021. The survey plan was developed in consultation with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP)the.
A single SM4Bat acoustic detector (Wildlife Acoustics, Maynard, Massachusetts) was deployed to record bat echolocation calls in full spectrum to identify bat species in the Lease Area. In 2020, the detector was deployed for 65, nights from 16 August–18 November; in 2021, the detector was deployed for 115 nights, from 30 June–01 November. Normandeau Associates, Inc. managed the surveys in 2020, and the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) managed the surveys in 2021. BRI analyzed the calls recorded in both years.
Combining both years of data, detections included the eastern red bat (n=495), big brown/silver-haired bat group (n=478), silver-haired bat (n=80), hoary bat (n=37), big brown bat (n=26), and Myotis species (n=3). No federally listed northern long-eared bats or Indiana bats were detected.