Digital Aerial Survey of Marine Wildlife in New York Bight for Offshore Wind Planning

NYSERDA, APEM, and Normandeau Associates conducted quarterly ultra-high resolution aerial digital surveys of marine resources in a 43,745.20 km² offshore planning area in the New York Bight starting in 2016. Each survey collected approximately 300,000 images covering at least 7% of the area using a transect design, with a special grid survey in a wind energy area collecting around 100,000 images. The dataset includes surveys from Summer 2017 through Spring 2018.

Use Cases

• Train object detection models for marine birds and mammals based on the high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Analyze seasonal abundance patterns of vulnerable species based on quarterly survey timing.
• Assess potential environmental impacts of offshore wind development based on spatial distribution data.
• Conduct geospatial analysis of species density relative to proposed wind energy areas.

Strengths

• Surveys cover a large spatial area of 43,745.20 km² in the New York Bight.
• High volume of imagery, with approximately 300,000 images collected per survey.
• Temporal coverage includes multiple seasons from Summer 2017 to Spring 2018.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NYSERDA, Normandeau Associates Inc., APEM Ltd.

Collection Method

Multi-year ultra-high resolution aerial digital surveys using transect and grid designs.

Time Range

Surveys from 2016 onward; dataset includes YR2 surveys from Summer 2017 to Spring 2018.

Geography

Offshore planning area in the New York Bight, from Long Island southeast to the continental shelf break.