The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) has completed seafloor mapping in the New York Wind Energy Area, a proposed offshore wind site near Long Island in the US.
The NCCOS scientists aboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOOA) ship Nancy Foster collected necessary data in a ten-day acoustic mapping mission in October 2017.
The team is using the collected data to characterize seafloor habitats, morphology, topology, as well as fish distributions and abundance within the site.
NCCOS will continue the works this year by conducting optical ground-truthing surveys, substrate and grain-size characterization, and hard-bottom predictive modeling in the area. Two cruises are planned to collect ground-truth data in April and September 2018.
The surveys are part of a three-year agreement signed in 2016 with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for producing comprehensive seafloor substrate maps and model validation of the New York Bight region in support of alternative energy development.
Project partners include the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Office of Coast Survey, and private industry.