Abstract
On the 1st of June 2009, the General Council on Environmental Quality Assessment of the Ministry of Rural, Marine and Natural Environment of the Spanish Government, on the light of the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (bimep) project carried out by AZTI-Tecnalia, decided that whole Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process was not required. Nevertheless, the Environmental Impact Statement (EISt) of the above mentioned Ministry, taking into account the great uncertainties about some predicted environmental impacts, underlined the need to implement the Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) proposed in the EIS. Among other environmental factors, substratum alteration was foreseen to occur during the commissioning stage of the submarine cables and consequently, may affect benthic habitats and species. Funded by BIMEP S.A. (http://bimep.com/en) and carried out by the Marine Research Division of AZTI-Tecnalia (www.azti.es), the EMP of the submarine cables installation in bimep showed that the observed impacts were in the range of those predicted in the EIS an assessed as non-significant.