M23AS00332 Questions and Answers revised 7-19-23.pdf

Questions and Answers

M23AS00332

Question 1: Is there a field site implied by the solicitation? Or are we free to choose any site? If the latter, is the site required to be in the United States?

Answer 1: There’s no pre-determined study site for this study, except that the study would be conducted in the US.

Question 2: If the Block Island Wind Farm (BIWF) site is to be used again, as it was in the

RODEO project, will the site’s instrumentation be available?

Answer 2: I’m not sure what it means by “instrumentation.” BOEM and the selected Recipient would decide on the specific acoustic sensors used in the study upon discussion.

Question 3: The narrowness of the budget and quick turnaround from submission to project start makes us think that this proposal is targeted at the group that has already been working at the BIWF site. Is this proposal very likely to fund a group doing ongoing research?

Answer 3: No. The research scope reflects the information gaps BOEM needs to fill for its environmental assessment. The time between awards and project start date is pretty standard.

Once the project is awarded, the Recipient would initiate a kickoff meeting with BOEM to discuss details of the study. This does not mean the start of field data collection.

Question 4: Will there be other appropriate calls for the work we want to do?

Answer 4: BOEM constantly seeks innovative ways to conduct ocean monitoring for its environmental impact assessment. DAS technology is an active research area BOEM is interested in exploring. Therefore it is likely BOEM will pursue studies using DAS to study particle motion, substrate vibration, and tracking low-frequency baleen whales.

Question 5: Can you tell us if we will be able to get access to the developer geotechnical borings for South Fork and Vineyard Wind during the execution of this project?

Answer 5: While geotechnical data are being collected by the offshore wind developers, BOEM will work with the developers to obtain permission to share these data once the installations are completed.