Scottish Power Renewables (SPR), in partnership with Vattenfall Wind Power, (VWP), has been awarded the rights to develop up to 7,200MW of wind driven electrical power off the East Anglian coast, within an area known as the East Anglia Zone. Together these companies have formed the joint venture East Anglia Offshore Wind (EAOW) Ltd.
The current round of development within the EAOW Zone focuses on East Anglia THREE and FOUR and the associated cable corridor, shown in Figure 1-1. A large benthic and epibenthic characterisation survey of the whole Zone was carried out between September 2010 and January 2011 by Marine Ecological Surveys Ltd (MESL, 2011), during which surveys were conducted across the extent of East Anglia THREE and FOUR, as well as sections of the cable corridor.
APEM were commissioned by EAOW to assess whether further sampling was required to inform the ecological baseline for the development of East Anglia THREE and FOUR and the cable corridor, or whether data from the 2010 surveys were sufficient to provide a statistically robust spatial characterisation of the benthic and epibenthic ecology of the site.
