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necessitates the adoption of a precautionary approach to the assessment of this species, therefore the sensitivity of spawning whiting is assessed as medium. The corresponding impact is therefore likely to be of minor adverse significance.


Lemon Sole 157. Whilst Ellis et al. (2012) does not provide spawning grounds for lemon sole, Coull et al. (1998) does. As shown by Figure 11.58 the spawning grounds of lemon sole are extensive covering wide areas of the North Sea. From Figure 11.58 it is apparent that a negligible of the defined lemon sole spawning grounds are overlapped by the 168dB contour, giving a negligible magnitude of effect.


158. Coull et al. (1998) states that flat fish species such as lemon sole are not thought to be affected by noise generated by seismic surveys and that they are not included in seismic survey restriction maps. Furthermore, lemon sole are not substrate specific spawners and show minimal spatial dependency in respect of spawning grounds, their sensitivity is considered to be low, giving an impact of negligible significance.


Herring 159. Blaxter and Hoss (1981) found startle responses at received levels between 122– 138dB re 1μPa and observed that the response depended on the size of the herring. Skaret et al. (2005) found that herring spawning close to the sea bed did not show any sign of a reaction towards a survey vessel passing at a standard survey speed (10–11 knots) at a distance of 8–40 m at sound pressure levels ranging from 70-150 dB re 1 μPa 1 Hz. In a seismic study on adult herring involving sound exposure levels (SEL) ranging from 125 to 155 dB re 1 μPa2, Peña et al. (2013) found that no changes were observed in swimming speed, swimming direction, or school size. The lack of a response to the seismic survey was interpreted as a combination of a strong motivation to spawn, and a progressively increased level of tolerance over time.


160. Herring generally adopt low-risk behavioural strategies (Fernö et al. 1998; Axelsen et al. 2000), but at times predator avoidance must be balanced with other activities that affect vigilance. During the feeding season, the reaction towards vessels is low compared with the wintering period (Misund 1994) and the act of reproduction during the spawning season takes precedence over avoidance reactions that are evident at other times of the year (Nøttestad et al. 1996, Skaret et al. 2003). Mohr (1971) observed that ripe herring swimming close to the sea bed showed no avoidance reactions to a moving trawl, consistent with high reaction thresholds during spawning.


161. No recognised herring spawning grounds are overlapped by the 168dB contour modelled for pelagic fish species (Figure 11.59).


Preliminary Environmental Information May 2014


East Anglia THREE Offshore Windfarm


Chapter 11 Fish and Shellfish Page 63


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