Ocean Ecology Limited: Mapping seabed habitats

Ocean Ecology Limited (OEL) is a UK-based marine ecological consultancy that specialises in providing a range of marine surveys, laboratory analysis and expert consultancy services to feed into environmental impact assessments and monitoring programmes with a particular focus on the offshore windfarm sector.

Scope of work: Since 2018 Ocean Ecology have been acting marine ecological consultants to innogy for the development of Sofia. Following its appointment, Ocean Ecology has been providing specialist advice and analytical services to innogy relating to the development of its benthic monitoring plan, mapping of sensitive seabed habitats and siting of the wind farm infrastructure to minimise potential impacts during installation and operation. The provision of this ongoing input is set to continue throughout 2020 and on to the start of construction in 2022.

Economic impact: Despite the uncertainty associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, the site investigation works for Sofia were able to continue safely throughout Spring 2020. This provided Ocean Ecology with a sustained stream of consultancy work that helped keep its team of marine scientists busy throughout this difficult time.

Training and development: Ocean Ecology regularly host interns from a variety of leading research institutes throughout the UK and actively fund applied PhD research focusing on the development of novel approaches to assessing marine biodiversity associated with marine renewables.

"We’re thrilled to be working with Sofia to help deliver what will be one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms. Given our extensive experience providing specialist marine ecological services to the European offshore windfarm sector we are uniquely placed to help the team address the unique set of challenges associated with constructing a windfarm on the Dogger Bank, some 195 km from shore."

- Ross Griffin, Technical Director, Ocean Ecology Limited 

June 2020