The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) recently announced that it has selected five multi-year projects totaling more than $2 million to further study important environmental and commercial fishing topics to support the responsible development of offshore wind, two of which will fund research at BRI.

The primary project BRI was awarded is titled, “Multi-Scale Relationships Between Marine Predators and Forage Fish.” This three-year, nearly $500,000 project is designed to better understand the linkages between forage fish and seabirds, and implications of offshore wind development on seabird behaviors and distribution.

Evan Adams, BRI’s Quantitative Ecologist, said, “Forage fish like herring and menhaden are critical components of marine food webs. This collaborative research project is focused on quantifying the importance of forage fish to the movements, abundance, and population trends of marine predators. We thank NYSERDA for funding this research so that we can better understand the effects of offshore wind development on these complex and dynamic ecosystems.”

BRI will also contribute to a project awarded to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, titled “Development of Monitoring Protocols for Nanotag Studies at Offshore Wind Farms.” This will be a two-year, nearly $300,000 project to develop standardized guidelines to inform the use of miniature digitally-coded VHF (very high frequency) transmitters to monitor birds and bats in relation to offshore wind energy development.

To learn more about these projects and others funded by NYSERDA, read NYSERDA’s full press release here.