The Fisheries Research Institute has been conducting experimental investigations in the offshore wind turbine waters of western Taiwan since 2019 to understand the changes in underwater biota. The survey results show that after the installation of wind turbines, the benthic species in the sea area show an increasing trend, with the wind turbine foundation piles having a fish gathering effect. This trend is helping to form new fishing grounds and increasing the catch of fishermen, and it has the potential to play a role in resource spillover in the future.
In early 2019, underwater foundation piles and wind farm facilities began to be built in the wind turbine waters of western Taiwan. To remove the doubts of fishermen about changes in the fishing grounds, the Institute conducted a special investigation of underwater biota in the wind turbine waters. Using bottom trawls equipped on fishing research ships, a total of 15,757 specimens of fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, and other organisms were collected and analyzed using cluster structure methods. The analysis results showed that the composition of captured species has undergone annual changes, and there are signs of an increase in the number of benthic species. In addition, underwater acoustic identification release experiments have found that wind turbine foundation piles have better aggregation effects on benthic fish species such as Evynnis cardinalis, Acanthopagrus latus, Parapristipoma trilineatum, and Arius maculatus.
According to the Fisheries Research Institute, with the increasing demand for renewable energy in the Taiwan industry, competition, cooperation, and related issues between the installation of wind turbines and the development of fisheries in the western waters of Taiwan have attracted wide attention. The institute has analyzed the changes in fish species in the wind turbine waters using research ships and underwater acoustics. It will continue to investigate and monitor fishing grounds in the future and develop multiple utilization technologies for the sea area to create a sustainable business model of coexistence and prosperity between wind farms and fishing grounds.
Figure 1. Changes in the number of biological species collected by the research ship (the line represents the changes in the number of species, and the histogram represents the proportion of migratory and benthic species)
Figure 2. Time series of receiving underwater acoustic identification release signals: schematic diagram of the Evynnis cardinalis signal