The Éolien en Mer SIG is a partner in the OWFSOMM project led by France Energies Marines.

OWFSOMM is the abbreviation for “Offshore Wind Farm Surveys Of Marine Megafauna: standardization of tools and methods for monitoring at OWF scales”.

The project’s primary aim is to provide a method of intercalibrating the different types of aerial surveys of the marine megafauna in offshore wind farms, particularly between human visual observations and the recordings from high-definition cameras.

The second objective is to improve the efficiency of multi-sensor detection by using an artificial-intelligence tool to identify and characterize marine megafauna. This combines data from different methods of observation (visual from a boat or aircraft, acoustic hydrophone recordings, tracking using a GPS tag) to identify birds and marine mammals using deep-learning networks.

Data gathered for monitoring marine megafauna while determining the baseline for the offshore wind farm of Dieppe Le Tréport will be shared for the analyses. This data comes from the wind farm’s regulatory monitoring. It is collected by boat and aircraft and from underwater acoustics. In addition, specific aircraft-based surveys are carried out with duplicated observations. An initial aircraft that records automatically using high-definition cameras will be followed by a second where humans make visual observations. This will enable the two methods to be intercalibrated.

The project will supply tools and recommend methodologies and practices that facilitate and harmonize the monitoring of megafauna, in terms of selecting techniques and defining the areas and times for sampling.