New research is helping improve our understanding of how offshore wind developments interact with Scotland’s marine environment.

New research is helping improve our understanding of how offshore wind developments interact with Scotland’s marine environment. The Scottish Marine Energy Research (ScotMER) Programme today published three projects have addressed important evidence gaps by:

🐦 Tracking Leach’s Storm-Petrels from St Kilda and European Storm-Petrels from the Treshnish Isles, providing the first colony-specific tracking data for these internationally important seabird populations.

🐟 Studying Atlantic salmon and sea trout movements around operational offshore wind farms in the Moray Firth, improving understanding of how migratory fish use these areas and their potential exposure to offshore renewable infrastructure.

🎙️ Exploring the use of passive acoustic monitoring to assess marine biodiversity, demonstrating how existing underwater sound recordings could support long-term environmental monitoring and detect ecological change.

Together, these projects strengthen the evidence base supporting environmental assessment, marine planning and sustainable offshore wind development in Scottish waters.