Modeling At-Sea Occurrence and Abundance of Marine Birds to Support Atlantic Marine Renewable Energy Planning : Phase I Report

Marine birds have the potential to be affected by human activities in the marine environment such as offshore wind energy development. This report describes the first phase of a project aimed at producing maps of the spatial distributions of marine bird species in U.S. Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) waters that can be used to inform marine spatial planning in the region. Visual sighting survey data from over three decades, contained in the ‘Compendium of Avian Occurrence Information for the Continental Shelf waters along the Atlantic Coast of the U.S.’ database, were analyzed to derive seasonal and annual maps of the spatial distributions of 40 marine bird species in U.S. Atlantic OCS waters from Florida to Maine. NCCOS IAA MOA-2013-046-8696, BOEM OCS Study 2016-039 NCCOS BOEM IAA M13PG00005