Establishing Methods to Assess Sea Scallop Biological Condition in Relation to Wind Farm Development

GENERAL DESCRIPTION:

The movement towards renewable energy production in the United States has led to a surge in the development of offshore wind turbines. Many of these planned turbine areas are in close proximity to productive scallop fishing grounds. Despite the high level of understanding about scallop biology in general, many questions remain regarding the specific drivers of meat quality and reproductive condition. As part of the CFRF’s existing fisheries monitoring for the South Fork Wind Farm (SFWF) lease area, we are conducting a monthly beam trawl survey for two years prior to, one year during, and three years post-construction of the turbines. The initial work plan did not include funding to sample the biological condition of individual scallops and limited the survey area in the development zone, which did not allow adequate sample sizes of scallops to be collected to effectively evaluate baseline condition.

This project is intended to demonstrate that monitoring the biological condition of scallops can be easily incorporated into the CFRF’s existing wind farm impact surveys and will highlight concerns regarding the potential impacts of offshore wind farm development on the Atlantic sea scallop.

Project goals:

  1. Improve the ability to monitor biological impacts on the Atlantic sea scallop during and after the development of offshore wind turbines.

  2. Establish baseline scallop biological condition data in the South Fork Wind Farm development area.

  3. Set a precedent to urge the wind farm companies to include this sampling as an essential piece of their monitoring surveys.

Data Collection Strategies:

Each month, sampling will be conducted during our Beam Trawl Survey inside the South Fork Wind Farm development area as well as a productive scallop fishing ground 10 miles to the west as a control reference area. From each area, 30 scallops will be randomly selected for biological condition sampling, and the following data will be recorded:

  • Shell height (mm)

  • Meat Quality (good/white, fair/brown, or poor/gray)

  • Sex and Gonad Stage

  • Meat Weight (g)

  • Tissue Weight (g)

  • Gonad Weight (g)

These parameters will be used to assess the shell height to meat weight relationship, gonad and viscera weight relationships, meat appearance, the presence of any parasites or abnormalities, and reproductive stage.

In addition, due to the challenges of recording precise weights of lightweight scallop tissues at sea and the need for adaptations of these protocols in instances when weighing at sea is not practical, for at least three months of sampling all tissues will be saved in a labeled zip lock bag on ice until weights of the tissues can also be recorded on land. The weights recorded at sea will then be compared to the weights recorded on land to determine whether there is a difference between methods and to determine the most efficient method to use moving forward.

project team:

this project is supported by:

2022 Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside NA22NMF4540054