Dr. Simon Berrow:

I thank the Vice Chairman. There were a lot of questions there. To start with the question on floating offshore wind, clearly fixed wind is the main gig and people are quite aware of the impacts of construction operations in terms of acoustic impacts. Floating offshore wind is much more of an unknown. A few floating offshore wind farms have been in deployed in Scotland and I think there is one in Portugal but they are quite small. Therefore, we are speculating to a certain extent on the potential impacts. They seem to be more benign. There is still debate on how to best fix the turbines with drag anchors, which obviously can have an impact on the benthos, but it is quite limited, on whether there is an entanglement risk, on what species would be most at risk, on the noise of them, on what they would sound like, on what frequency band they would be in, on how far it would travel and on which species would be most sensitive to those noises. In terms of running the cable ashore, there would be concerns about electromagnetic fields and whether that would impact on elasmobranches, which would be particularly sensitive and about how far that would travel. We are still very much in the unknown, and that is where the research comes in. We deploy, we monitor, we feed back, we change, and we work with the designers to try to be as efficient as possible and minimise impacts.

Ireland could lead the way. We have the wave energy test site off north County Mayo and there is a project called Afloat, which aspires to deploy a full-scale floating offshore wind device by 2023, so that we can see what they look like, what they sound like and see what the drag anchors do and do all that kind of primary research.

At the moment, the impact of floating offshore wind is unknown. There will be large areas that are excluded from some activities. Will that be positive? Will they act as fish aggregating devices? Will they create artificial reefs? Can we put mechanisms in place to enhance that biodiversity?

There are lots of questions. The members, as decision-makers, need to have a knowledge-based decision-making process. We need to have that empirical data, the research, the monitoring and the baseline reference values, so that we can say with a certain level of confidence that if we do something, we think something might happen or will happen. The members can then make an informed decision. At the moment, I do not think the research is there for members to make an informed decision. We have been borrowing things from other countries and, perhaps, some of them are not appropriate.

In terms of humpback whales and basking sharks, these are charismatic megafauna, which people can relate to. They are bringing good news stories to Ireland. The number of humpback whales is increasing worldwide. They are showing incredible resilience, as a result of protective measures. As human beings, if we do the right thing and make the right management decisions, marine species can respond. In some ways, they will respond much more quickly to those on land. This is not the case with all species. Some species and habitats are, in some ways, beyond recovery. We talk about champions that people can relate to. We are privileged in Ireland to be among these species. We need to value and treasure them, not just for tourism, but for those of us who live here. Seeing a humpback whale bubble-netting is an unbelievable lifetime experience. We do not need David Attenborough to tell us about that and we do not need to see it on National Geographic. We can go out on a boat off the coast of Ireland and we can experience and connect with them. If we do not treasure these things, we will not protect them. That is the flowery bit.

What do they feed on? What are the pressures? What are the more sensitive? Where are the best places for them to be? In which seasons do they naturally occur? Where were the sharks which appeared off the Cork coast going? Why did they not go to west Clare, where I was? I was waiting for them and I was going to sample them, but they never arrived. Why was that? They seemed to have gone to Mayo. These are fundamental questions which are important so that we have informed management. We need to build that capacity in Ireland.

There are good examples of mapping marine species, but we have to remember that we are living in a changing world. We are living in unprecedented times. Therefore, data that we might have collected ten years ago is out of date because things have changed. Sea-level temperatures are changing very rapidly. The underlying physical oceanography, the zooplankton, the basking sharks, the forage fish and the humpback whales are all feeding the larger higher predators and are all changing. We, therefore, need an ongoing research and monitoring technique which feeds into management and human beings-----