Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Volume 5 Number 7: EMEC Fall of Warness Tidal Test Site: Wildlife Observations Project Annual Report

4. Project Summary

4.1 Site Activity

A number of developers have completed various stages of device installation at the test site during the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. Table 1 below summarises work in progress during this period.

EMEC Berth	Developer	Activity
1	Hammerfest Strom UK	Device testing
2	Tidal Generation Ltd.	Device testing
3	Kawasaki Heavy Industries	No activity
4	Open Hydro	Device testing
5	Bluewater	No activity
6	Atlantis	No activity
7	Voith Hydro	Device nacelle installed Sept. 2013
8	Scotrenewables	Device testing

Table 1: Developer site activity at the EMEC Fall of Warness test site 1st April 2013 to 31st March 2014

Installed devices may or may not be operational at any given time. Typical additional activity at the test site may include periodic complete removal/re-installation of devices for maintenance, maintenance visits by developers, deployment of Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers to measure tidal resource, and acoustic surveys.

4.2 Project Activity

Overall, this contract period has seen a very high completion rate of planned watches, with an average watch achievement rate of 95%.

The third quarter of the contract suffered a reduced rate of data collection due to the exceptionally heavy storms which were a persistent feature of the UK and Orkney weather pattern in winter 2013/14. The reduced daylight hours experienced in Orkney during the winter months afford less flexibility in the schedule. Nevertheless, watch achievement rates remained above 80% for all months, with the exception of May which was affected by observers' holidays (see Table 2 below).

Month	Percentage (%)	Actual/Potential Hours	Comments
April 2013	100	80/80
May 2013	65	52/80	Annual holiday
June 2013	100	80/80
July 2013	100	80/80
August 2013	100	80/80
September 2013	100	80/80
October 2013	100	80/80
November 2013	90	72/80	Bad weather
December 2013	88	70/80	Bad weather
January 2014	98	78/80	Bad weather
February 2014	96	77/80	Bad weather
March 2014	100	80/80

Table 2: Achievement of watches expressed as a percentage and actual contractual hours per month.

A new observer joined the observation team in November 2013, to replace one who resigned. As with previous changes to the team, the lead wildlife observer trained the new observer in the methodology and characteristics of the observation area through a series of shadowed watches, culminating in a set of dual watches carried out on the 4 ^th and 5 ^th November 2013. There was a high level of correlation in the results of these dual watches as can be seen from Table 3 and Table 4 below. The apparent discrepancy in numbers recorded for shag and phalacrocorax species ( Table 4) is due to the time taken for detailed identification, and the variance observed when the total number of these species is taken together with the number of cormorant is only 5.

	Number of Species Recorded
	Lead	New
GANNET	19	17
PHALACROCORAX	98	106
EIDER	3	1
Total	120	124

Table 3: Analysis of results of dual watch carried out on 04/11/2013

	Number of Species Recorded
	Lead	New
PHALACROCORAX	51	157
SHAG	108	8
CORMORANT	1	0
SEAL	11	17
RED THROATED DIVER	7	7
BLACK GUILLIEMOT	34	22
EIDER	38	42
GREAT NORTHERN DIVER	1	1
RED BREASTED MERGANSER	5	7
GANNET	2	2
Total	258	263

Table 4: Analysis of results of dual watch carried out 05/11/2013

In order to ensure consistency in the data collected, the lead wildlife observer continues to supervise and collate the results from all observers in the team.

4.3 Wildlife Observations Summary

Detailed analysis of the data collected is out-with the scope of this project. The entire set of raw wildlife observation data collected for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014 is available to download from the Marine Scotland Interactive website.

The monthly wildlife sighting counts are presented in Table 5 and Table 6 below. Note these sightings are total sightings per month, and have not been corrected for effort (number of hours observed per month). Seasonal graphs showing sighting counts per mean summer month and per mean winter month are also provided ( Figures 2 to 4).

A high proportion of seals sighted are recorded as 'unidentified'. This is mainly due to a combination of environmental conditions (light, glare, sea state, etc) and distance from the observation point making it difficult to identify seals to species level. Also, it is very difficult to distinguish young grey seals (up to around 3 months old) from adult harbour seals when in the water.

Monthly wildlife sighting counts with respect to monthly means (calculated from the entire EMEC Wildlife Observations Programmes Fall of Warness dataset) are presented graphically as Annex B.

Species	Apr-13	May-13	Jun-13	Jul-13	Aug-13	Sep-13	Oct-13	Nov-13	Dec-13	Jan-14	Feb-14	Mar-14
Arctic tern	0	373	4508	880	36	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Auk	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Black guillemot	3564	1542	2103	2077	1015	29	35	66	64	235	1343	1990
Black throated Diver	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Common guillemot	82	69	319	114	1	8	16	0	3	33	128	57
Common scoter	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Cormorant	11	16	46	11	42	8	28	24	24	32	13	45
Diver Sp.	4	0	3	0	0	0	0	15	22	6	26	11
Eider Duck	986	163	64	39	4	3	147	501	772	446	905	1012
Gannet	10	13	26	149	357	199	147	210	110	7	0	4
Goldeneye	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Goosander	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Great Northern Diver	0	0	27	0	0	0	1	7	12	8	13	8
Kittiwake	0	0	0	26	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Little Auk	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
Long Tailed Duck	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	29	97	103	147	71
Phalacrocorax Sp.	914	241	279	339	474	1359	2285	4740	6124	1473	1526	926
Puffin	249	120	803	695	68	0	0	0	0	0	1	22
Razorbill	3	1	17	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	3
Red Breasted Merganser	37	0	0	6	0	6	51	52	40	29	34	25
Red Throated Diver	23	13	4	3	7	73	94	36	18	14	19	18
Sandwich Tern	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Shag	73	67	71	78	59	40	109	292	159	135	102	181
Slavonian Grebe	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified Bird	60	33	235	743	87	5	3	1	1	0	3	7
Total Birds	6017	2651	8505	5161	2150	1730	2916	5973	7446	2522	4264	4380

Table 5: Monthly sighting counts for bird species for period April 2013 to March 2014 at the EMEC Fall of Warness tidal test site.

Species	Apr-13	May-13	Jun-13	Jul-13	Aug-13	Sep-13	Oct-13	Nov-13	Dec-13	Jan-14	Feb-14	Mar-14
Harbour seal	0	0	1	1	3	0	3	0	0	0	0	3
Grey seal	0	0	1	1	4	14	21	10	7	12	1	0
Unidentified seal	105	27	70	90	72	224	521	73	50	50	65	11
TOTAL SEALS	105	27	72	92	79	238	545	83	57	62	66	14
Harbour porpoise	5	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Minke whale	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
White beaked dolphin	0	0	0	55	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Risso's dolphin	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Orca	8	0	0	6	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Unidentified cetacean	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL CETACEANS	13	0	0	61	2	0	0	2	1	0	0	0
Basking shark	0	1	0	0	5	11	0	0	0	0	0	0
Otter (Euoropean)	6	1	2	0	1	1	1	1	2	1	0	0

Table 6: Monthly sighting counts for seals, cetaceans and other species for period April 2013 to March 2014 at the EMEC Fall of Warness tidal test site.

Figures 2 to 4 below summarise the species of birds, cetaceans and seals observed at the Fall of Warness tidal test site during summer (April to September) and winter (October to March) months. Values shown are mean summer month (red) and mean winter month (blue). Any inter-seasonal comparisons drawn from Figures 2 to 4 should be made with caution as the data represents only one year of observations.

Figure 2: Mean summer month (red) and mean winter month (blue) bird species sightings at the Fall of Warness for period April 2013 to March 2014.

Figure 3: Mean summer month (red) and mean winter month (blue) seal species sightings at the Fall of Warness for period April 2013 to March 2014.

Figure 4: Mean summer month (red) and mean winter month (blue) cetacean, basking shark and otter species sightings at the Fall of Warness for period April 2013 to March 2014.

4.4 Issues & Concerns

Under a separate project funded by Marine Scotland and SNH, EMEC will undertake detailed analysis of the data gathered through this project. Within the data analysis project, EMEC has sought expert input from the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling ( CREEM) who have identified a limitation with the data in that there is insufficient data to construct 'detection functions' for the test sites.

To address this limitation, EMEC has developed a proposal for funding a boat-based calibration exercise to collect additional wildlife observation data at the test sites. This would provide information about the detectability rates for a range of distances from the observation points. The steering group for the data analysis project (which comprises Marine Scotland, SNH and EMEC) agree that the construction of site-specific detection functions, which will enable modelling of absolute changes in surface-visible wildlife presence, is an important output of the analysis project.