Overview As new marine developments- such as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and offshore wind farms- emerge, BIM is actively developing applied technical solutions to address Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) challenges faced by the fishing industry. Currently BIM is engaged in two MSP projects.
The Fisheries Conservation team is currently working on an assessment of coexistence between fisheries and offshore wind farms. The project aims to assess the effect of ORE on fishing activity in European waters and includes a spatiotemporal analysis of differences in fishing effort post wind farm construction and an assessment of technical and policy characteristics affecting these differences. Study outcomes in 2025 will provide new evidence to inform development of Irish government policy on optimising coexistence to minimise disruption of seafood production.
BIM developed a new fisheries participatory mapping approach in 2024 which combines face-to-face interviews with skippers, a new marine ‘spray-can’ computer application with detailed marine features, and vessel chart plotters to capture and validate fisheries activities. The study has enabled under 12 m vessel owners to provide new information on their activities for marine spatial planning. Ongoing engagement with the fishing industry, government departments, offshore wind developers and other relevant parties will be key to ensuring participatory mapping data are effectively used in marine spatial planning decisions. The participatory mapping project is expected to progress further this year.
For the 2024 project report, please see the following link.
To access the spatial data results from the 2024 project, please refer to the below link:
Citation for data:
Bord Iascaigh Mhara. (2025). Participatory mapping of small fishing vessel activities for marine spatial planning – spatial data 2024 (Version 1) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15188977
