Venterra Expands Marine Hard Bottom Benthic Services for Offshore Wind Industry

Venterra Group, the global offshore wind services company, is announcing the launch of its expanded marine hard bottom benthic and hard structure offering, underpinned by the expert environmental capabilities of its marine science consultancy, INSPIRE Environmental, and their small business partner, Marine Imaging Technologies, a leading subsea imaging company.

Building on unparallel expertise in providing benthic ecology services to offshore wind clients since the inception of the US industry, Venterra’s expanded integrated offering delivers one of the most comprehensive marine hard bottom ecology and hard structure service offerings available in the market. The offering addresses increasing requirements to monitor marine growth on both introduced hard surfaces (e.g., turbines and infrastructure) and native hard bottom (e.g., rocks and boulders) to assess impacts associated with offshore wind project development.

This offering will also support assessment of nature-based design for scour and cable protection associated with offshore wind, as well as climate resilience projects, the beneficial use of dredged material, and collection of high resolution, 3-D video for mass media scientific education and communications.

Between INSPIRE and Marine Imaging Technologies, the partners have worked on almost half of all US offshore wind projects for blue chip clients such as Orsted, Equinor, RWE, Ocean Winds, and Siemens Gamesa, as well as agencies like NYSERDA, NOAA, USACE, and USEPA. As this offering is increasingly relevant during the construction and post construction project phases, it represents the natural progression of Venterra’s support of the North American offshore wind industry.

Ensuring the development of offshore wind and the transition to clean energy is done in an environmentally friendly way, including maintaining seafloor health and fisheries sustainability, is a top priority for the industry. With a team of leading marine scientists, offshore wind engineers, and subsea imaging professionals, Venterra’s offering will help developers and tier one contractors to support critical decision-making, incorporating nature-inclusive design principles that mitigate and manage impacts on underwater ecosystems.

Paul Doherty, Venterra’s Executive Vice President for Engineering, said: "With this new collaboration between Venterra’s INSPIRE and Marine Imaging Technology, we are making it possible for offshore wind developers to clearly visualize the underwater environment, avoid or minimize environmental impacts and make cost-efficient design decisions. But what is truly brilliant about this offering is its ability to serve multiple industry needs in the same deployment, aligning biological monitoring with monitoring of engineering parameters to support operations and maintenance. Marine Imaging Technologies’ high-resolution subsea imaging capability will also advance our recently announced Marine Archaeology offering."

Venterra was formed to create a global services champion supporting the offshore wind industry’s rapid expansion and leading role in the energy transition. It is building a service offering across the wind farm lifecycle, comprising Engineer, Build and Support services. It is expanding by both acquisition and investing for accelerated organic growth.