OWEZ pelagic fish, progress report and progression after T1

This report presents the current status of pelagic fish research in the Offshore Windfarm Egmond aan Zee (OWEZ) after having finalized the T0 baseline survey in 2003 and the T1 survey after construction of the wind farm in 2007. The T0 study indicated a highly dynamic pelagic fish community along the Dutch coast: species composition were found highly variable on a local scale and clear hot spots appeared abandoned when returning the next day. This picture was confirmed in the T1 survey where the species composition of the catches in the entire coastal zone were found completely different from the ones 4 years earlier. Although no clear and direct effect of the wind farm has been observed yet, the above described information tells us to look for more local effects where we should focus on underlying processes in fish community behaviour. The effects of a single windfarm seem difficult to measure but when the Dutch government allows a drastic increase in such wind farms in the North Sea, the local effect will become a regional effect and might start to influence complete fish stocks. Therefore, complementary research will be executed by studying fish behaviour in the wind farm itself.