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The offshore windfarm industry has great potential for sustainable energy but requires space. The ability of fisheries to harvest within these windfarms varies. This has created a conflict between these two industries and discussions are hampered by differing approaches to the marine environment, a lack of understanding of what each industries requires, the significant money at stake, and the values the public place on marine conservation. To characterize, standardize, and quantify the scientific data addressing these concerns requires a framework. The framework should categorize data on spatial scales of 1 cm2 to 1 km2 (individual turbines/fishing vessels), 1–1000 km2 (companies), and >1000 km2 (regions), and by their ecological, economic, cultural, and institutional impacts. The framework should be repeated over temporal scales of the windfarm: pre-development (1–3 years), construction (1–2 years), post-construction (20–40 years), and decommission. Balancing the metrics used to describe the two industries will allow people to communicate clearly in an organized systematic way, hopefully resulting in a continuing supply of sustainable sea food and renewable energy to an increasingly hungry world.

 

Abstract There is about to be an abrupt step-change in the use of coastal seas around the globe, specifically by the addition of large-scale offshore renewable energy (ORE) developments to combat climate change. Developing this sustainable energy supply will require trade-offs between both direct and indirect environmental effects, as well as spatial conflicts with marine uses like shipping, fishing, and recreation. However, the nexus between drivers, such as changes in the bio-physical environment from the introduction of structures and extraction of energy, and the consequent impacts on ecosystem services delivery and natural capital assets is poorly understood and rarely considered through a whole ecosystem perspective. Future marine planning needs to assess these changes as part of national policy level assessments but also to inform practitioners about the benefits and trade-offs between different uses of natural resources when making decisions to balance environmental and energy sustainability and socio-economic impacts. To address this shortfall, we propose an ecosystem-based natural capital evaluation framework that builds on a dynamic Bayesian modelling approach which accounts for the multiplicity of interactions between physical (e.g. bottom temperature), biological (e.g. net primary production) indicators and anthropogenic marine use (i.e. fishing) and their changes across space and over time. The proposed assessment framework measures ecosystem change, changes in ecosystem goods and services and changes in socio-economic value in response to ORE deployment scenarios as well as climate change, to provide objective information for decision processes seeking to integrate new uses into our marine ecosystems. Such a framework has the potential of exploring the likely outcomes in the same metrics (both ecological and socio-economic) from alternative management and climate scenarios, such that objective judgements and decisions can be made, as to how to balance the benefits and trade-offs between a range of marine uses to deliver long-term environmental sustainability, economic benefits, and social welfare. 

The year 2021 marked the highest temperature and likely the lowest oxygen content for the oceans since human records began ( 1 , 2 ). These changes have put marine species on the front lines of climate change. For example, marine species’ geographical ranges are shifting faster and experiencing more contractions than those of terrestrial species ( 3 , 4 ). However, whether climate change poses an existential threat to ocean life has been less clear. Marine species are often considered to be more resilient to extinction than terrestrial ones, and human-caused global extinctions of marine species have been relatively rare ( 5 ). On page 524 of this issue, Penn and Deutsch ( 6 ) present extensive modeling to reveal that runaway climate change would put ocean life on track for a mass extinction rivaling the worst in Earth’s history. Furthermore, they reveal how keeping global warming below an increase of 2°C compared with preindustrial levels could largely prevent these outcomes.