Digital Aerial Surveys to support bird and marine mammal distribution and density modelling in the UK Celtic Sea area

Wave Hub Development Services Ltd, trading as Celtic Sea Power (CSP) are a 100% subsidiary of Cornwall Council. As part of an ERDF-funded project, we require suitably competent service providers to deliver Digital Aerial Surveys (DAS) to support bird and marine mammal density and distribution modelling in the UK Celtic Sea area. The activity will support strategic considerations for Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) in the Celtic Sea. A brief general project description is provided below: The Cornwall FLOW Accelerator (CFA) project is a collaborative project including Wave Hub Development Services Development Ltd (WHDS project lead), University of Exeter (UoE), University of Plymouth (UoP) and the Offshore Renewable Catapult (OREC). It aims to develop tools, knowledge and data which accelerate the Celtic Sea FLOW opportunity and lay significant groundwork with respect to developing pipeline at both a FLOW project and supply chain level. The project is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Celtic Sea Power (CSP) has worked with Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, the JNCC and the RSPB to determine a suitable survey methodology for the proposed DAS that can feed into a regional characterization approach for the area. CSP also have an ambition to combine data and evidence from this proposed survey with other relevant data sets from the remaining Celtic Sea area. This will maximize spatial and temporal data coverage for relevant species that can feed into both Regional and National density and distribution modelling activities. This will also enable a more strategic view to be taken of the key potential species interactions in the area, geographically relevant potential development risks and the pre-empting of additional data and evidence that may be required in the future to support the assessment of FLOW.