Data underlying the publication: Offshore wind farms contribute to epibenthic biodiversity in the North Sea.

Video footage of epibenthic organisms at and around the scour protection in offshore wind farms was collected using a Remotely Operated Vehicle. 

The epibenthic community structure was assessed for species abundance and species diversity (species richness (S), species evenness (E) and Shannon diversity index (H)).

Species density for individual species were calculated as the number of individuals per m2 in a video frame; species density of clustering species was calculated in percentage as covered area per video frame. These different types of densities were combined by transforming them to the ordinal Marine Nature Conservation Review (MNCR) SACFOR scale. 

Statistical analyses were performed using the software package R version 3.6.3 with several functions from the ‘vegan package’. Before statistical analyses, species with only 1 observation in the dataset were removed to minimize the influence of rare species in multivariate analyses. To obtain a balanced dataset, the Monte Carlo resampling strategy was applied (by 100 randomized repetitions). 

For further information see manuscript.