CEFAS23-29 OWEC POSEIDON - LOT 4 (Southwest)

POSEIDON (Planning Offshore Wind Strategic Environmental Impact DecisiONs) is a Crown Estate-funded project (Offshore Wind Evidence & Change program (OWEC)) led by Natural England. The aim of the project is to provide tools to inform offshore wind planning, to minimise impacts on the natural environment through avoidance and early awareness of likely mitigation / compensation needs, allowing sustainable expansion of offshore wind. This will be achieved through the collection of strategic environmental baseline data and updated spatial models for key species (receptors), assemblages, and a suite of ecological metrics (diversity, functional traits). These will be used to identify regions that are most vulnerable to offshore wind impact and mapping of the environmental risk to help guide future offshore wind development rounds and to feed into wider marine planning.

Some evidence on species and habitat distribution and abundance exists, but often it is disparate, patchy and difficult to incorporate. POSEIDON aims to create a revised system which describes environmental risk across England and Wales, that can be applied to offshore wind (and other marine sector) planning. It is the intention of the project that this will become integrated with marine plans and help offshore wind decisions to comprehensively factor in risks to consent and risks to the environment. It will also help inform plan-level requirements for mitigation and compensation which can then be built into development project designs (and budgets) at the outset, as well as providing the template for future data collection at regional scale to support (and, potentially, speed up) planning and impact assessment.

Work to date under the project has identified spatial gaps in benthic data within the territorial waters of England, Wales and the Isle of Man. In consequence, a number of sample locations ('stations' hereafter; Figure 1) have been identified for sampling under POSEIDON. The 1,022 stations have been categorised into 5 Lots upon which all subsequent sample acquisition will be managed. This tender invitation is for the 195 stations in Lot 4 (South West) only.

This procurement is for:

Lot 4 - Southwest

Note that Lot 1 (North Sea) and Lot 2 (Irish Sea) of this POSEIDON project were tendered and awarded earlier in 2022 and Lot 3 (Celtic Sea) and Lot 5 (English Channel) were tendered earlier in 2023 and are currently in the process of being awarded.

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