Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Volume 5 Number 8: EMEC Billia Croo Wave 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 01 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. Table 1 below summarises work in progress during this period.

Table 1: Developer site activity at the EMEC Billia Croo test site 1st April 2013 to 31st March 2014

EMEC Berth	Developer	Activity
1	E.ON	No activity
2	Scottish Power Renewables	Device testing
3	Vacant	No activity
4	Seatricity	Installation activity
5	Wello Oy	Installation activity
Shallow water	Aquamarine Power Ltd	Device testing

Installed devices may or may not be operational at any given time. 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 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 92%.

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 75% for all months (see Table 2 below).

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

Month	Percentage (%)	Actual/Potential Hours	Comments
April 2013	100	80/80
May 2013	100	80/80
June 2013	95	76/80	Bad weather
July 2013	100	80/80
August 2013	100	80/80
September 2013	100	80/80
October 2013	100	80/80
November 2013	80	64/80	Bad weather
December 2013	75	60/80	Bad weather
January 2014	85	68/80	Bad weather
February 2014	75	60/80	Bad weather
March 2014	98	78/80	Bad weather

A new set of "Big Eyes" binoculars, with exactly the same specification as the previous set, were installed at the end of March 2014. This was required as the current set were showing significant signs of wear. The possibility of sourcing a unit with a better inclination angle measurement system and a built-in range finding system was explored, but there is currently nothing available that would meet this requirement.

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 will be available to download from the Marine Scotland Interactive website.

The monthly wildlife sighting counts are presented in Table 3 and Table 4 below. Note these sightings are total sightings per month, and have not been corrected for effort (number of hours observed per month). The high number of unidentified seals sighted in August 2013 is due to increased seal sightings further offshore during that month. Seasonal graphs showing sighting counts per mean summer month and per mean winter month are also provided (Figures 2 to 4).

Monthly wildlife sighting counts with respect to monthly means (calculated from the entire EMEC Wildlife Observations Programme Billia Croo dataset) are presented graphically in Annex B.

Table 3: Monthly sighting counts for bird species for period April 2013 to March 2014 at the EMEC Billia Croo wave 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
Arctic skua	0	1	6	26	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Arctic tern	0	4	64	75	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Black guillemot	374	136	145	157	66	10	94	11	5	49	138	270
Black headed gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Black scoter	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Black throated diver	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Common gull	0	0	0	0	1	0	8	42	0	0	0	10
Common guillemot	378	337	314	1478	8	21	70	31	37	88	135	176
Common scoter	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	9	0	0	0	0
Cormorant	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Diver Sp.	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Eider Duck	142	18	9	37	63	48	42	99	86	144	185	86
Fulmer	2049	821	1224	1954	1562	1970	271	469	715	2108	535	1759
Gannet	258	358	101	72	390	283	249	103	26	22	20	14
Glaucous gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
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
Greater black-backed gull	24	10	16	5	12	5	30	80	102	68	78	39
Great northern diver	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	10	20	15
Great skua	13	144	151	90	103	41	14	0	0	0	0	0
Grey phalarope	0	0	0	0	0	3	3	0	0	0	0	0
Geylag goose	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Herring gull	40	2	5	14	9	3	92	35	61	25	35	32
Icelandic gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	1	0	2	0
Kittiwake	14	83	322	70	0	0	14	20	3	4	1	18
Leach's petrel	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Lesser black-backed gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Little Auk	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	1	0	4	4	2
Long tailed duck	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	1	2	2	0	4
Mallard	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Manx shearwater	0	9	6	33	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	0
Mew gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Northern shoveler	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Phalacrocorax Sp.	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Puffin	45	91	191	438	15	0	0	0	0	0	2	13
Razorbill	23	70	34	98	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	15
Red breasted merganser	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Red throated diver	3	4	3	0	0	0	0	2	0	2	0	0
Sabine's gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Sandwich tern	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Scaup	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Shag	747	492	534	658	865	1021	1069	695	306	434	401	457
Shelduck	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Slavonian grebe	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Storm petrel	0	1	6	3	1	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
Surf scoter	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Teal	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified auk	122	264	242	795	57	9	32	17	13	32	94	119
Unidentified duck	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified goose	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified gull	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	0
Unidentified tern	34	103	169	197	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified bird	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Velvet scoter	0	0	0	0	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0
Wigeon	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total Birds	4267	2949	3544	6200	3155	3422	2003	1620	1357	2992	1658	3029

Table 4: Monthly sighting counts for seals, cetaceans and other species for period April 2013 to March 2014 at the EMEC Billia Croo 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	1	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0
Grey seal	5	5	20	189	22	18	40	10	9	2	2	8
Unidentified seal	2	1	0	0	33	6	19	2	7	4	2	1
TOTAL SEALS	8	6	20	193	55	24	59	12	17	7	4	9
Harbour porpoise	12	10	6	28	22	7	12	5	3	3	4	4
Humpback whale	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Minke whale	0	5	7	2	3	3	2	0	0	0	0	1
Bottlenose dolphin	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
White beaked dolphin	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
White-sided dolphin	6	2	0	0	2	0	7	0	0	0	0	0
Risso's dolphin	4	4	6	7	0	10	6	0	3	8	4	0
Short-beaked common dolphin	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Long-finned pilot whale	0	0	27	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Pilot whale	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Orca	0	12	11	0	16	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unidentified cetacean	8	9	0	0	22	3	2	1	0	4	1	4
TOTAL CETACEANS	34	42	57	37	65	24	29	6	6	15	9	9
Basking shark	0	4	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Otter (Euoropean)	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Figures 2 to 4 below summarise the species of birds, cetaceans and seals observed at the Billia Croo 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 Billia Croo for period April 2013 to March 2014.

Figure 3: Mean summer month (red) and mean winter month (blue) seal species sightings at the Billia Croo 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 Billia Croo 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 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.