Marine Biodiversity Projects

This project will determine the current status of recruitment of the Pacific oysters in Ireland and identify certain conditions that favours successful establishment of the species in a number of SPAs as dictated by the Aquaculture and Foreshore Management Division of DAFM and make recommendations in relation to subsequent licensing and management of aquaculture activities in the sites.

This project was designed to measure the effectiveness of management or mitigation measures taken as part of aquaculture licencing decisions to reduce or minimise risk to conservation features.

This project will monitor the recovery of exploited deep-water species following the decline of the deep-water fisheries in Irish waters.

Outreach through a variety of media including webpage, brochures, presentations, storymaps and videos to disseminate Marine Biodiversity Scheme and projects to a variety of audiences. This includes policy makers, stakeholders, scientists and the general public.

The project will continue to deploy, manage and maintain vessel monitoring systems (iVMS) on inshore fishing vessels to provide data on location of fishing and to enable estimation of fishing effort.

All native oyster beds are within Natura 2000 sites and there are specific conservation objectives for oyster habitat (national need and implementation of Habitats Directive). The project will support the development of management plans, measures and restorative actions for oyster beds in these areas.

The establishment and monitoring of a genetic baseline of Irish wild salmon populations for determining extent of contemporary and future genetic introgression from escaped farmed salmon