Development of a Quantitative Survey Method for Pelagic Fish Aggregations Around an Offshore Wind Farm Using Multibeam Sonar

Offshore wind farms are rapidly expanding worldwide, and the submerged structures supporting wind turbines have the potential to function as artificial reefs for marine organisms. Quantitative visualization of fish aggregations around these foundations can provide valuable information for promoting collaboration between fisheries and offshore wind energy development. This study explored the use of multibeam sonar to detect spatial distributions and estimate the biomass of pelagic fish aggregations around the foundations of offshore wind power facilities. Fish distribution was extracted from multibeam water column image data using an automated sequence of filtering steps, ending with a spatial filter designed to remove common noise artifacts in multibeam sonar data. The resulting fish aggregations were visualized in three dimensions, revealing a tendency to cluster leeward of turbine and observation tower foundations, and fish biomass was successfully estimated from beam backscatter strength. The developed method can be applied to other offshore wind farms to demonstrate the role of turbine foundations as artificial reefs for fish.