Balancing risks of injury and disturbance to marine mammals when pile driving at offshore wind farms

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This study was funded by Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd. (BOWL) using equipment previously purchased by UK Department of Energy & Climate Change, Scottish Government, Oil and Gas UK, COWRIE and Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd. Whilst this study was funded by a commercial developer, Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd. (BOWL), the funding body had no input into data collection, data analysis or interpretation, or the writing of the paper. Experimental playbacks of ADD were conducted under Animal Licence number 91734 from Scottish Natural Heritage. Moorings for recording devices were licensed by Marine Scotland and consented by the Crown Estate. We thank: MFRAG members for constructive advice; Nick Brockie, Lis Royle, Elizabeth Reynolds and BOWL colleagues for industry data and facilitating fieldwork during windfarm construction; Bill Ruck at Moray First Marine and University of Aberdeen colleagues for support with data collection. We thank Caroline Carter and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript.