ESS Ecology have been awarded a contract for bird and marine mammal monitoring at the 500MW Greater Gabbard offshore wind farm (GGOWF).

The wind farm is located over 23km from the Suffolk coast.

ESS Ecology's success at re-tendering for the work allows the firm to continue data collection at GGOWF, which it has been doing since 2004.

Following the installation and switching on of all turbines in September 2012, the first year of post-construction monitoring has now been completed.

The vessel used to carry out the surveys will be the M. V. Choice, while the survey team will be led by David Berry of Choice Marine Services.

GGOWF is an important monitoring project for the offshore renewable energy industry, where continuous bird monitoring, using the same methodology designed for both characterisation and monitoring, and comparable survey transects, has been carried out continuously throughout the entire project life cycle.

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ESS Ecology added that the expertise gained from this site and others has enabled the improvement of the study design with the introduction of two new reference areas sampled since 2004, alongside the wind farm survey area.

Furthermore, surveys have been conducted by an experienced team of marine ornithologists available to the offshore renewables industry. The dataset therefore is unrivalled in quality as well as temporal coverage.

A component added to future surveys at GGOWF during the tender process was the provision of an additional surveyor to carry out migration watches, thereby increasing the detection of birds on passage through GGOWF and the surrounding area.

ESS Ecology have previously carried out such dedicated migration observations during six migration seasons at Greater Gabbard in the pre-construction phase, and also at the Round 3 Navitus Bay site, and will be applying similar methods for this project.

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(JP/CD)