EIMR 2014 - Salmon modelling paper

Meeting targets for green energy generation will involve marine renewables. To ensure that this development is environmentally sustainable, it is necessary to assess potential interactions between renewable energy arrays and marine organisms.

One species that may be affected is the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Salmon undertake extensive migrations which pass through Scottish coastal waters, where they may encounter renewable energy developments. To assess possible risks to migrating salmon, it is important to understand how many fish may encounter devices. This requires knowledge of how many migrating salmon pass through areas where renewables development is taking place, but there are few data available.

One potential resource in Scotland is a historical archive of tagging study data. We use these data, in conjunction with an agent-based modelling approach, to simulate movements of fish around Scotland. This approach works by representing the coastal seas as a linear series of ‘cells’ corresponding to salmon fishery districts, and a parallel series of cells representing the salmon home rivers. At each time step, fish can migrate along the coast, or move into their home rivers. This model can be parameterised using data on coastal fishing effort, productivity of home rivers, and other factors, in order to explore potential influences on patterns of recaptures, and to test hypotheses about coastal movements of salmon.