Environmental consultancy APEM has completed aerial wildlife surveys for the 950MW Moray East offshore wind farm off the coast of Scotland.
Thousands of high resolution photos of birds and marine mammals have been taken across a 1400 square kilometre area.
APEM said the images will help regulators and the developers compile data on wildlife to find out how they interact with the wind farm once operational.
APEM project manager Sean Sweeney said: “Gathering these robust baseline data is where APEM comes in. Our state-of-the-art camera systems, mounted on specialist survey aircraft, fly carefully planned survey lines over the wind farm area.”
“The thousands of detailed images they capture are then passed to our team of image analysts to identify the species of birds in the pictures. This information is then used to determine species abundance, distribution and behaviour across the wind farm and its surrounding area.”
EDPR, Engie and Mitsubishi Corp are shareholders in the wind farm, which is located in the Moray Firth.