Evaluating Effects of Stressors from Marine and Hydrokinetic Energy

Instrumentation for Monitoring around Marine Renewable Energy Converters: Workshop Final Report

“…There is a need for rapid assessments of likely interactions with the MECs, including defining plausible pathways of harm that might befall a particular animal in close proximity to a particular converter, foundation, mooring line, anchor, or power cable. Solutions include convening a group of experts to examine several existing methodologies for rapid risk assessments, including those established in Scotland (Potential Impacts of Wave and Tidal Energy Development; Marine Scotland 2012), Canada (Pathways of Effects; Isaacson and Daborn 2011) and the United States (Environmental Risk Evaluation System; Copping et al 2012), and to determine criteria for carrying out rapid assessments to guide nearfield monitoring. Because each protected species may have a different level of acceptable risk that varies by nation, there may be value in also separately convening relevant regulators from a specific geographic region to agree on assessing the incremental risks under an adaptive framework.…”