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Owing to the increase in environmental legislation, certain prescribed habitat types are listed under Annex 1 of the European Habitats Directive, in order to protect them from the impact of offshore developments and marine operations. The locations and ex tent of these habitats, together with areas suitable for fish spawning, are poorly studied and must be investigated and the data interpreted as part of the pre-development survey requirements. This is typically carried out during the routine geophysical site-survey or route survey. However, these data are re-interpreted in the field for environmental risks and some additional environmental sampling sites iteratively selected and sampled for ground truthing purposes. The elements of the survey, therefore, are usually as follows:
Environmental reinterpretation of acoustically acquired data (sidescan sonar, bathymetry (swathe if available), acoustic ground discrimination, sub-bottom profiler) for the selection of habitats for ground truthing. Ground truthing using video and stills photography, together with some seabed sampling (on selected habitat types) Provision of environmental habitat report highlighting the potential for the presence of target habitats and mitigation methods if appropriate.
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Examples of prescribed habitats:
