Peter E Robins

Bangor University · Centre for Applied Marine Sciences, School of Ocean Sciences

ICOE 2022 presentation Are Marine Renewable Energies expensive? The LCOE (i.e. cost) of marine renewable energy is higher than other forms of renewable electricity. Marine renewable’s LCOE is projected to decrease with technology learning (i.e. TRL increase), but perhaps the valuation of renewable energy is wrong? For example, the predictability...

Tides contribute to the large-scale residual circulation and mixing of shelf seas. However, tides are typically excluded from global circulation models (GCMs) so their modelled residual circulation (and mixing) in shelf seas may be systematically wrong. We focus on circulation as it is relatively unexplored, and affects shelf temperature and salini...

Worldwide increased demand for offshore renewable energy (ORE) industries and aquaculture requires developing efficient tools to optimize the use of the offshore space, reducing anthropic pressure. The synergetic development of marine renewable energy infrastructure with mariculture has been hypothesized as a way to reduce costs through shared infr...

Viral pathogens including SARS-CoV-2 RNA have been detected in wastewater treatment effluent, and untreated sewage overflows, that pose an exposure hazard to humans. We assessed whether SARS-CoV-2 RNA was likely to have been present in detectable quantities in UK rivers and estuaries during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We simulated real...

Compound estuarine flooding is driven by extreme sea-levels and river discharge occurring concurrently, or in close succession, and threatens low-lying coastal regions worldwide. We hypothesise that these drivers of flooding rarely occur independently and co-operate at sub-daily timescales. This research aimed to identify regions and individual est...

Complex coastal currents control early-stage larval dispersal from intertidal populations, and late-stage settlement patterns, but are often poorly resolved in larval dispersal models. Generally, there is high uncertainty in the timing of larval spawning, which markedly affects larval dispersal. In this study, we describe the physical parameters th...

Estuaries are places where floods are usually threatening from two main sources: high tide or storm surge from the sea, and high river flow from the land. Since estuaries are, at the same time, places of great biodiversity and highly populated areas, an adequate flood modelling approach is needed to mitigate and reduce the possible risk. In this st...

Free-flowing rivers have been impacted by anthropogenic activity and extensive hydropower development. Despite this, many opportunities exist for context-specific energy extraction, at locations deemed undesirable for conventional hydropower plants, in ways that reduce the scale of operation and impact. Hydrokinetic energy conversion (HEC) is a ren...

Climate-change-induced hazards are negatively affecting the small islands across Indonesia. Sabang Island is one of the most vulnerable small islands due to the rising sea levels and increasing coastal inundation which threaten the low-lying coastal areas with and without coastal defences. However, there is still a lack of studies concerning the lo...

Climate-change-induced hazards are negatively affecting the small islands across Indonesia. Sabang Island is one of the most vulnerable small islands due to the rising sea levels and increasing coastal inundation which threaten the low-lying coastal areas with and without coastal defences. However, there is still a lack of studies concerning the lo...

Southeast Asia is considered to have some of the highest levels of marine plastic pollution in the world. It is therefore vitally important to increase our understanding of the impacts and risks of plastic pollution to marine ecosystems and the essential services they provide to support the development of mitigation measures in the region. An inter...

Global climate change is exposing intertidal organisms to increasing air and sea temperatures and changing ocean currents, affecting their ability to disperse, survive and reproduce, and resulting in shifts in their distribution and abundance. Improved understanding of these shifts requires characterization of population structure and local adaptat...

Abstract Knowledge on correlations between environmental factors and genome divergence between populations of marine species is crucial for sustainable management of fisheries and wild populations. The edible cockle (Cerastoderma edule) is a marine bivalve distributed along the Northeast Atlantic coast of Europe and is an important resource from bo...

Background Larval connectivity between distinct benthic populations is essential for their persistence. Although connectivity is difficult to measure in situ, it can be predicted via models that simulate biophysical interactions between larval behaviour and ocean currents. The blue mussel (Mytilus Edulis L.) is widespread throughout the northern he...

Kelp beds are one of the most productive marine systems and, while little of this production is directly consumed, there is growing evidence that kelp detritus is an essential food source for many detrital and suspension feeders, and forms an important component of offshore sedimentary carbon pools. However, the extent of the contribution of kelp d...

Estuaries are places where floods are a constant threat from both land and sea direction. At the same time estuaries are places of great biodiversity and traditionally very populated areas, which makes them highly vulnerable. In this study LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamical model is applied to examine the effectiveness of different coastal protection scena...

Fluvial and surge-tide extremes can occur synchronously resulting in compound flooding in estuaries, greatly intensifying the hazard. This flood risk has the potential to increase in the future as the frequency, phasing and/or intensity of these drivers change. Improved understanding of how extreme fluvial discharge and surge-tides interact will he...

Providing remote and off-grid coastal communities with renewable and sustainable electricity is a goal that could be met with tidal-stream technology. Presently there are many turbine designs, which presents a challenge when making an unbiased resource assessment. Moreover, the majority of tidal-stream turbines appear to be aimed at producing large...

Lagrangian Particle Tracking Models (PTMs) have a wide range of applications in the marine environment, from predicting the dispersal of microplastics to larval transport. The increased complexity of ocean-modelling techniques has seen simulation of transport move from probabilistic approaches (e.g. advection and random walk) to more deterministic...

The small area of the United Kingdom relative to weather systems makes renewable energy sources variable on short time scales. Short term variability is therefore a growing concern with increasing amounts of renewable energy integration. In this work, we address how tidal energy can contribute to reducing medium-term variability in the future UK en...

Estuaries are potentially exposed to compound flooding where weather-driven extreme sea levels can occur synchronously with extreme fluvial discharge to amplify the hazard. The likelihood of compound flooding is difficult to determine due to multiple interacting physical processes operating at sub-daily scales, and poor observation records within e...

Connectivity between populations is important when considering conservation or the management of exploitation of vulnerable species. We investigated how populations of a broadcast‐spawning marine species (scallop, Pecten maximus) that occur in discrete geographic locations were connected to each other. Population genetic insights were related to th...

Hydrokinetic energy conversion refers to the conversion of kinetic energy in moving water to electricity. It offers an alternative to conventional hydropower, with benefits of modularity and scalability, in addition to being environmentally and socially less impactful. This study aims to determine the theoretical global riverine hydrokinetic resour...

In some shelf sea regions of the world, the tidal range is sufficient to convert the potential energy of the tides into electricity via tidal range power plants. As an island continent, Australia is one such region – a previous study estimated that Australia hosts up to 30% of the world’s resource. Here, we make use of a gridded tidal dataset (TPXO...

Tidal-stream energy can be predicted deterministically, provided tidal harmonics and turbine-device characteristics are known. Many turbine designs exist, all having different characteristics (e.g. rated speed), which creates uncertainty in resource assessment or renewable energy system-design decision-making. A standardised normalised tidal-stream...

Knowledge on how environmental factors shape the genome of marine species is crucial for sustainable management of fisheries and wild populations. The edible cockle (Cerastoderma edule) is a marine bivalve distributed along the Northeast Atlantic coast of Europe and is an important resource from both commercial and ecological perspectives. We perfo...

Invasive non-native species and global warming are two of the greatest components of global ecosystem change. The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, is the world most cultivated shellfish and was introduced throughout the Northwest European Shelf (NWES) under the premise it could not complete its life cycle. Recent warming trends have changed this...

The environmental cycling of antibiotic-resistant blaCTX-M-15-producing E. coli following release from wastewater treatment plants is a major public health concern. This study aimed to (i) assess the impact of sediment concentrations on the rate of their inactivation following release from human wastewater into freshwater, and (ii) simulate their s...

Population dynamics of marine species that are sessile as adults are driven by oceanographic dispersal of larvae from spawning to nursery grounds. This is mediated by life‐history traits such as the timing and frequency of spawning, larval behaviour and duration, and settlement success. Here, we use 1725 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to st...

We studied the role of oceanographic conditions and life history strategies on recovery after extinction in a metapopulation of marine organisms dispersing as pelagic larvae. We combined an age‐structured model with scenarios defined by realistic oceanographic conditions and species distribution along the Irish Sea coast (North Europe). Species lif...

Population dynamics of marine species that are sessile as adults are driven by oceanographic dispersal of larvae from spawning to nursery grounds. This is mediated by life-history traits such as the timing and frequency of spawning, larval behaviour and duration, and settlement success. Here, we use 1725 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to st...

Temporal variability in renewable energy presents a major challenge for electrical grid systems. Tides are considered predictable due to their regular periodicity; however, the persistence and quality of tidal-stream generated electricity is unknown. This paper is the first study that attempts to address this knowledge gap through direct measuremen...

Waterborne and shellfish-borne enteric viruses associated with wastewater-polluted coastal waters (e.g. Norovirus, Hepatitis A/E viruses, Adenovirus) represent a major threat to human health. Improved understanding of the locations and periods of heightened risks can help target mitigation measures and improve public health. We developed a river-es...

Within the ECOSTRUCTURE project, we are developing a range of modelling methodologies to simulate the dispersal of non-native species in the Irish Sea a region that is strategically important for ocean energy. Here, we outline these modelling methodologies, including introducing the selected models and model settings, datasets for model forcing and...

The combined hazard of large waves occurring at an extreme high water could increase the risk of coastal flooding. Wave-tide interaction processes are known to modulate the wave climate in regions of strong tidal dynamics, yet this process is typically omitted in flood risk assessments. Here, we investigate the role of tidal dynamics in the nearsho...

Assessing the tidal stream energy resource, its intermittency and likely environmental feedbacks due to energy extraction, relies on the ability to accurately represent kinetic losses in ocean models. Energy conversion has often been implemented in ocean models with enhanced turbine stress terms formulated using an array-averaging approach, rather...

Characterisations of the tidal stream resource and its variability over various timescales are crucial for the development of the tidal stream energy industry. To date, no research has compared resource sensitivity in standing wave (when peak currents occur midway between high and low water) and progressive wave (where peak currents occur at high a...

To reduce the uncertainty in resource assessments, the physical presence of the turbine arrays must be accounted for. Using a 3-D Regional Ocean Model with tidal stream energy extraction, we show that in regions where tidal stream energy sites have been leased in close proximity to each other there is some degree of inter-connectivity. In this pape...

Tidal energy is one of the most predictable forms of renewable energy. Although there has been much commercial and R&D progress in tidal stream energy, tidal range is a more mature technology, with tidal range power plants having a history that extends back over 50 years. With the 2017 publication of the "Hendry Review" that examined the feasibilit...

Tidal energy is one of the most predictable forms of renewable energy. Although there has been much commercial and R&D progress in tidal stream energy, tidal range is a more mature technology, with tidal range power plants having a history that extends back over 50 years. With the 2017 publication of the "Hendry Review" that examined the feasibilit...

To mitigate against future changes to estuaries such as water quality, catchment and estuary models can be coupled to simulate the transport of harmful pathogenic viruses, pollutants and nutrients from their terrestrial sources, through the estuary and to the coast. To predict future changes to estuaries, daily mean river flow projections are typic...

Accounting for the feedbacks of tidal stream energy extraction reduces uncertainties within modelled resource assessments and environmental impact studies. Historically, modellers have implemented tidal energy extraction in regional-scale models using an enhanced drag applied at the seabed or a uniform drag applied over the water column. Here, we c...

Although tidal stream energy is highly predictable, the distribution of the resource varies over small spatial scales and over tidal-to-decadal time scales, requiring detailed models and accurate analysis techniques. The present study investigates the spatial and temporal variability of the tidal stream energy resource around France, using a tidal...

As harbour porpoises Phocoena phocoena are abundant within tidal stream environments, mitigating population-level impacts from tidal stream energy extraction is considered a conservation priority. An understanding of their spatial and temporal occupancy of these habitats at a regional-scale will help steer installations towards locations which maxi...

Tidal energy extraction offers a highly predictable, reliable energy resource. Natural flow regimes will be altered by the installation of large scale tidal arrays. Bed morphology, sensitive to changes in tidal flow, will be impacted as a result of feedbacks between tidal arrays and coastal hydrodynamics. This research investigates the impact of la...

Following recent and rapid development, the contribution of renewable generation to a low carbon energy system can be significantly expanded through careful design of tidal-stream schemes. Although tidal circulation can be almost 100% predicted – and a typical tidal cycle describes the typical tidal-stream energy resource, variability is significan...

To make meaningful contributions to renewable energy targets, a tidal-stream energy device that can be deployed at a wide range of sites throughout the world is needed. To inform industry, the distribution of the global tidal-stream energy resource must be characterised. The "first-generation" of tidal energy devices are being developed for wave sh...

Non-native populations of Pacific oysters Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg 1793) are established around the United Kingdom (UK), with two genetically different stocks originating from separate introductions to the UK and France. In this study, we use a coupled biophysical model to simulate Pacific oyster larval transport, in order to investigate the dis...

A 30 day time series of depth averaged ADCP data from the coast of northwest Anglesey, in the Irish Sea.

The extraction of marine energy, through either tidal or wave array operation, will clearly influence the hydrodynamics of a region. Although the influence to tidal currents and wave properties is likely to be very small for the majority of extraction scenarios, the influence to bed shear stress is likely to be greater, since bed shear stress is qu...

The majority of tidal energy convertors (TECs) currently under development are of a non-yawing horizontal axis design. However, most energetic regions that have been identified as candidate sites for installation of TEC arrays exhibit some degree of directional and magnitude asymmetry between incident flood and ebb flow angles and velocities, parti...

Realistic oceanographic conditions are essential to consider in the design of resilient tidal-stream energy devices that can make meaningful contributions to global emissions targets. Depth-averaged or simplified velocity profiles are often used in studies of device performance, or device interaction with the environment. We improve representation...

The assessment of the resource at potential kinetic in-stream tidal energy conversion sites must take into account far more than the basic characterization of flow speed, water depth and water column profile. Consideration should also be given to addressing and resolving other variables and factors that might contribute to uncertainty in analysis....

The regular and predictable nature of the tide makes the generation of electricity with a tidal lagoon or barrage an attractive form of renewable energy, yet storm surges affect the total water-level. Here we present the first assessment of the potential impact of storm surges on tidal-range power. Water-level data (2000–2012) at nine UK tide gauge...

Small variations in velocity lead to large variations in power. Using a device-specific power curve, technical power can be calculated for the data period. For data > 30 d, tidal analysis allows us to estimate more accurately annual power generation and variability from tides. The spatio-temporal resolution of the modelling simulation aligned to it...

The marine renewable energy industry is expanding globally in response to increased energy demands and the desire to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Within the UK, Wales has the potential for the development of diverse marine renewable technologies, with a strong tidal range resource, areas of high tidal current energy, and a spatially limited wa...