Predator and Prey Around Renewable Energy Developments (PrePARED)

The PrePARED project aims to improve our understanding of predator-prey interactions around offshore wind farms to reduce uncertainty in impact assessments and improve models of seabird, marine mammal, and fish distribution. This collaborative project involves nine organisations and focuses on prey availability (fish) as a key factor in predator distribution around wind farm infrastructure. Between 2022-2025, telemetry studies, using gadoid fish (including Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), whiting (Merlangius merlangus) and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus)) are being carried out in the Moray Firth.

The project focuses on prey distribution, abundance, diversity and biomass investigating "reef effects" caused by offshore wind farms and their potential to support fish biomass aggregation or production. Marine mammal distribution and behaviour is also monitored alongside fish data, assessing how the construction and operation of wind farms and environmental factors influence predator spatial distribution.