IMIS - Marine Onderzoeksgroepen

Oil and gas platforms head towards decommissioning while increasing evidence shows how several species benefit from these structures. Current regulation calls for full structure removal through decommissioning. However, we ignore the ecological implications of complete structural removal and the subsequent impact on biodiversity. Here we aim to inform how platforms are used by Atlantic cod using telemetry tracking. We deployed 12 hydrophones (Thelma Biotel) surrounding an oil and gas platform at the Danish oil fields in the North Sea (Denmark) in July 2023. The hydrophone deployment network coarsely forms two concentric circles at 50m and 200m away from the platform. Then, we tagged 50 Atlantic cod individuals of >40cm total length using Thelma Biotel acoustic tags. The hydrophones will be recovered in June 2024 for data download and analysis. The presence/absence information from the data will aid us in uncovering how Atlantic cod interacts spatially with the platform.