Edinburgh Napier University

  Establishing the movements, space use and critical habitats of mobile marine species is a significant challenge in mitigating the impacts of anthropogenic activity on them. This limits the sustainable use of ocean resources while preserving marine ecosystem health. To address this problem, our project will support efforts to identify the movement patterns, habitat use, and critical habitats of commercially important, high conservation concern species of fish and elasmobranchs by deploying equipment to facilitate data collection on the movements. The collected data will be analysed post-project through other research programmes, with no additional funding required. The species this project will focus on are listed on either the OSPAR List of Threatened and/or Declining Species and Habitats, Scotland’s Priority Marine Feature list, or the Convention on Migratory Species Annex 2 list with a focus on tope Galeorhinus galeus, porbeagle Lamna nasus, flapper skate Dipturus intermedius, common blue skate Dipturus batis, spurdog Squalus acanthias, basking shark Cetorhinus maximus and bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus. Data on the movement of these species will be collected by two types of tag technology: acoustic telemetry and pop-up archival satellite tags (PSATs). This equipment will ultimately provide data to facilitate the development of space use models for these species. These models can be integrated into marine spatial planning to support the sustainable development of offshore renewable energy projects, helping to mitigate negative interactions with high conservation value mobile species.