SUBSEA SOUNDSCAPE PROJECT

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

The £2.7 million Subsea Soundscape project, led by ORE Catapult, is building a pioneering regional framework in the Celtic Sea to provide valuable insights into underwater noise conditions and marine mammal presence.

By combining new and existing acoustic data, the project is establishing a marine mammal and noise evidence base, informing planning and consenting decisions for floating wind development.

In October 2025, 21 at-sea mooring units, equipped with state-of-the-art broadband acoustic recorders, pop-up acoustic retrieval systems and tag detection capabilities were deployed with eDNA and environmental sampling at service intervals to maximise data capture.

The Subsea Soundscape project is funded by the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change (OWEC) programme, led by The Crown Estate.

Crucially, the data collected will be made publicly available through OWEC’s Marine Data Exchange, so that developers can better understand potential interactions between marine mammals and offshore wind equipment, and regulators and statutory bodies can build an effective picture of suitable locations for development.

The project partners are Celtic Sea Power and the University of Exeter.

Read our full press release here

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

1. Deploy a large-scale network of 21 acoustic monitoring stations in the Celtic Sea.

2. Support a new marine mammal evidence base for the Celtic Sea.

3. Create a region wide acoustic soundscape model and open source baseline acoustic data of the Celtic Sea, integrating new data and other secured acoustic data sources.

4. Co-develop road maps with regulators (England and Wales) to use acoustic soundscape models for consenting.

5. Compare the Subsea Soundscape regional approach to data gathering to industry standard data collection, to determine the difference in cost, time, carbon and safety.

6. Sample eDNA and water column physics at all stations to support new data and help cross validate visual, satellite and acoustic techniques.

LATEST DATA EXTRACT

This is an example data extract provided to demonstrate the nature and structure of the information being collected. When data is uploaded, the extract will represent a partial snapshot of the available data up to a point in time – therefore no conclusions, findings, trends, or project outcomes should be inferred from the information presented.