Demersal Fish Biomass and Abundance Near Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations

Anthony W. J. Bicknell's research assesses the fine-scale proximity effect of offshore wind turbine foundations on demersal fish. The dataset likely contains measurements of fish abundance, biomass, and size for species like haddock and flatfish at distances up to 250 meters from turbine structures. It was published on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling fish aggregation patterns based on proximity to turbine foundations.
• Analyzing biomass changes for demersal fish species like haddock and flatfish.
• Assessing the magnitude of the artificial reef effect at a fine spatial scale.
• Predicting broader ecosystem consequences of offshore wind farm presence.
• Optimizing wind farm design for marine net gain based on localized reefing evidence.

Strengths

• Data focuses on a fine-scale proximity effect (<250 m), providing granular ecological insights.
• Analysis includes specific fish groups: all demersal fishes, flatfish Pleuronectiformes spp., and haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus.
• Statistical models predicted a magnitude increase of ~1.5 to 1.6 times more individuals and biomass at 30 m compared to 240 m.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is a 3.0 MB DOCX file, which may require conversion or parsing for analysis.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Field research assessing fish abundance, biomass, and size relative to turbine foundations.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-19 05:22:25; freshness should be verified.

Geography

A northern latitude wind farm.