Rory B O'Hara Murray

Marine Scotland Science | MSS · Oceanography Group

There is considerable interest in Scotland, supported by the Scottish Government, in the expansion of renewable energy production. In particular, significant offshore wind energy developments are already planned in coastal waters to the east of the Forth and Tay estuaries. It is important to understand the local and cumulative environmental impact...

High resolution measurements of the water velocity, bedforms and suspended sediment concentration were made using an Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter, acoustic bedform scanners and an Acoustic Backscatter System, under irregular free-surface waves. The waves were generated in a large scale flume facility above a number of bedform types. These data were...

Measurements of intrawave sediment entrainment processes are reported above ripples under irregular waves generated in a large-scale flume facility. The data consist of substantive observations of small-scale processes collected at high spatial and temporal resolution under irregular wave forcing, typical of coastal environments. Acoustic measureme...

Primary production dynamics are strongly associated with vertical density profiles, which dictate the depth of stratification and mixed layers. Climate change and artificial structures (e.g. windfarms) are likely to modify the strength of stratification and vertical distribution of nutrient fluxes, especially in shelf seas where fine scale processe...

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...

Areas around headlands often have higher tidal flow, making them important foraging locations for seabirds and marine mammals, as well as of interest for tidal energy extraction. Using in situ field measurements and hydrodynamic modelling, this study investigated tidal features around the most northerly promontory headland on the United Kingdom mai...

Acoustic telemetry was used to track salmon smolts during river migration and into the open marine coastal zone. We compared migration direction and speed with particle tracking simulations to test the hypothesis that marine migration pathways are defined by active swimming current following behaviour. Habitat-specific survival rates, movement spee...

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...

Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE), comprising marine (wave and tidal energy), and offshore wind, has the potential to supply large amounts of ‘green’ sustainable energy, reducing CO2 emissions. The main obstacles to deployment so far are technical challenges and cost. However, there are also concerns about how harnessing offshore energy can affect th...

Management of the sea is increasingly complex, riddled with uncertainty and necessitates involvement from researchers across disciplines and stakeholders from multiple policy and practice sectors. This article discusses “The Cooperative Participatory Evaluation of Renewable Technologies on Ecosystem Services” (CORPORATES) research project, which de...

Growing concern about the impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life has led to a global increase in the number of acoustic monitoring programmes aiming to quantify underwater soundscapes. However, low-frequency measurements in coastal sites may be affected by flow noise that is not actually present in the environment, but is caused by tidal flo...

Due to the importance of parasite and disease controls for animal welfare, environmental sustainability and the economic viability of the finfish aquaculture industry in coastal waters, spatial management measures need to take into account the degree of connectivity between management areas. This paper describes the model integration (one-way nesti...

Tidal stream energy technology has progressed to a point where commercial exploitation of this sustainable resource is practical, but tidal physics dictates interactions between tidal farms that raise political, legal and managerial challenges that are yet to be met. Fully optimising the design of a turbine array requires its developer to know abou...

Mariners working in the marine environment have long been aware of the risks of operating in highly dynamic coastal areas. The hunt for fossil fuel alternatives has led to a greater research effort to observe dynamic offshore environments for tidal stream energy. Marine biologists, oceanographers, technologists, engineers and, technicians have rise...

This report provides an overview of the state of affairs (1) with regards to the deployment of wet renewables and (2) marine energy storage systems; (3) how they affect abiotic and biotic compo-nents of the marine ecosystem and (4) developments and concepts on cumulative impact assess-ments related to marine renewable energy devices and (5) future...

This report provides an overview of the state of affairs (1) with regards to the deployment of wet renewables and (2) marine energy storage systems; (3) how they affect abiotic and biotic compo-nents of the marine ecosystem and (4) developments and concepts on cumulative impact assess-ments related to marine renewable energy devices and (5) future...

The environmental implications of tidal stream energy extraction need to be evaluated against the potential climate change impacts on the marine environment. Here we study how hypothetical very large tidal stream arrays and a business as usual future climate scenario can change the hydrodynamics of a seasonally stratified shelf sea. The Scottish Sh...

Abstract As oil reserves in established basins become depleted, exploration and production moves towards relatively unexploited areas, such as deep waters off the continental shelf. The Faroe-Shetland Channel (FSC, NE Atlantic) and adjacent areas have been subject to increased focus by the oil industry. In addition to extreme depths, metocean condi...

The Goto Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, contain three parallel channels that are suitable for tidal energy development and are the planned location for a tidal energy test centre. Energy extraction is added to a 3D numerical hydrodynamic model of the region, using a sub-grid momentum sink approach, to predict the effects of tidal developmen...

The tidal stream energy sector is now at the stage of deploying the world's first pre-commercial arrays of multiple turbines. It is time to study the environmental effects of much larger full-size arrays, to scale and site them appropriately. A theoretical array of tidal stream turbines was designed for the Pentland Firth (UK), a strait between Sco...

The Orkney Islands and surrounding waters (known as the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters Strategic Area, PFOW) contain a significant portion of Scotland's tidal and wave energy resource. This paper forms part of a wider study modelling tidal and wave processes, and planned renewable energy extraction, in PFOW using 3D hydrodynamic and spectral wave...

Storm surges are an abnormal enhancement of the water level in response to weather perturbations. They have the capacity to cause damaging flooding of coastal regions, especially when they coincide with astronomical high spring tides. Some areas of the UK have suffered particularly damaging surge events, and the Firth of Clyde is a region with high...

• We describe a modelling project to estimate the potential effects of wave & tidal stream renewables on the marine environment. • Realistic generic devices to be used by those without access to the technical details available to developers are described. • Results show largely local sea bed effects at the level of the currently proposed renewables...

Seawater turbidity due to suspended particulate material (SPM) is an important property of a marine ecosystem, determining the underwater light environment and many aspects of biological production and ecology. SPM concentrations are largely determined by patterns of sediment resuspension from the seabed due to shear stress caused by waves and curr...

A high spatial resolution three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic ocean model of the Orkney Islands is used to investigate the tidal stream resource and physical environmental impact in the Pentland Firth, a high-resource area where the first arrays of tidal stream turbines are likely to be deployed in Scotland. Tidal stream turbines are represented in...

The aim of the project was to exchange knowledge between researchers and a range of public and private sector stakeholders around the understanding of marine ecosystem services (ES), in the context of marine spatial planning (MSP) decisions around marine renewable energy (MRE). The project developed a pilot study located at the Firth of Forth, Scot...

Densely populated coastal areas of the North Sea are particularly vulnerable to severe wave conditions, which overtop or damage sea-defences leading to dangerous flooding. Around the shallow southern North Sea, where the coastal margin is low-lying and population density is high, oceanographic modelling has helped to develop forecasting systems to...

The interdisciplinary project " Cooperative participatory assessment of the impact of renewable technology on ecosystem services: CORPORATES " developed a process to promote more integrated decision making using Ecosystem Service (ES) concepts in marine management. Marine renewable energy industry and regulatory/advisory partners were brought toget...

Primary producers (phytoplankton) provide important provisioning and regulating ecosystem services. They form the basis of marine food-webs, supporting production of higher trophic levels (a provisioning ecosystem service), and act as a sink of CO2 (a climate regulation service). We propose that, as phytoplankton are important to climate cycle and...

On 25-26 March 2013, 52 early career scientists and engineers, studying various aspects of coastal science, met at the University of Aberdeen for the ninth Young Coastal Scientists and Engineers Conference. The conference was jointly organised by the School of Engineering, University of Aberdeen, and Marine Scotland Science. Early-career scientists...

There is considerable interest in Scotland in the expansion of renewable energy production. In particular, significant offshore wind energy developments are already planned in coastal waters to the east of the Forth and Tay estuaries. It is important to understand the local and cumulative environmental impact of such developments within this region...

The workshop on “The Science Of Deepwater Oil Spills – Modelling” held in Aberdeen in September 2013 included more than 50 experts drawn from academia, government, consultants and industry to discuss aspects of the science needed to respond in an effective way to a deepwater oil spill west of Shetland. Experts in oceanography, circulation modelling...

Blue growth must be obtained sustainably in European seas. Offshore oil and gas exploration continues to expand into deeper waters along the NW European shelf edge, and the competition for sea space on the European continental shelf is accelerating. At the same time national resources to monitor anthropogenic environmental impact are reducing. In o...

The 7th UK Young Coastal Scientists and Engineers Conference welcomed 60 scientists and engineers to come together and discuss coastal research. The conference was hosted by the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool, 30–31 March 2011. Early career practitioners and researchers presented 42 short papers on a range of topics driven by current iss...

In shallow marine environments, the transfer of momentum in the near bed layer, over steep wave induced sand ripples and under regular two-dimensional flows, is dominated by the process of vortex formation and shedding. Sediment entrainment is highly influenced by this process, with maximum pickup associated with lee wake vortex shedding events aro...