Potential feeding sites for seabirds and marine mammals reveal large overlap with offshore wind energy development...

Offshore wind energy is experiencing accelerated growth worldwide to support global net zero ambitions. To ensure responsible development and to protect the natural environment, it is essential to understand and mitigate the potential impacts on wildlife, particularly on seabirds and marine mammals. However, fully understanding the effects of offshore wind energy production requires characterising its global geographic occurrence and its potential overlap with marine species. This study aims to generate risk maps of interaction between offshore and seabirds and marine mammals based on the distribution of their potential foraging areas. These maps will allow visualisation of the spatial occurrence of risk and its severity for both groups. To achieve it, we built a structural equation model of three levels (plankton, fish, and top predators) to predict small-ranged seabirds and marine mammal spatial richness as a proxy of potential feeding sites. Later, we overlapped these maps with global wind density (as a proxy of potential offshore development areas) to identify risk areas. Our results pointed to simplified trophic chain models that effectively explained the richness of small-ranged seabirds and marine mammals. Our risk maps reveal a high overlap with potential offshore wind development. Low-risk areas were located mainly in so-called Global North countries, suggesting vast knowledge gaps and potential hidden risks in these areas. Importantly, the highest risk values were found outside the Marine Protected Areas for both groups, underscoring the necessity for strategic planning and the expansion of renewable energy sources to avert potential conservation challenges in the future.