Venterra Group launches new market leading Marine Acoustics services for offshore wind industry

Venterra Group, the global offshore wind services company, has today announced the launch of its expanded marine acoustics offering, underpinned by the expert capabilities of its Engineering companies INSPIRE Environmental, Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions (GDG), and Partrac.

Building on INSPIRE and GDG’s established foundation of providing marine acoustics measurement, modelling and marine mammal exposure assessments to offshore wind clients, Venterra’s new integrated offering delivers one of the most comprehensive marine acoustics services available in the market. This also includes leveraging the metocean and marine expertise of Partrac, which has extensive experience with buoy and sensor deployment and enables the ability for joint acoustic and metocean campaigns.

Across Venterra’s team, key marine acoustics project experience includes co-leadership of the award-winning educational website “Discovery of Sound in the Sea” (dosits.org), acoustics measurements for offshore surveys, as well as more recently sound source, noise exposure and animal behavior modeling for an offshore wind installation company.

Ensuring the development of offshore wind is delivered in an environmentally friendly way, including maintaining marine mammal health and fisheries sustainability, is a top priority for the industry. With a team of leading marine scientists and offshore wind engineers specializing in acoustics, Venterra’s offering will help developers and tier one contractors to support critical decision-making as well as mitigating and managing noise impacts on underwater ecosystems.

Paul Doherty, Venterra’s Executive Vice President for Engineering said: “With the global drive for more sustainable offshore wind development and enhanced environmental considerations, reducing the amount of noise emitted from construction and installation activities is of paramount importance. Modeling, measuring and understanding this noise is critical to the success of our industry, and this underpins Venterra’s enhanced marine acoustics capabilities. It’s also central to our build and construction offering with CAPE Holland, our market leading vibro-driving company, delivering low noise emission monopile installation through its specialist vibro technology.”

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.

Venterra’s Marine Acoustics Leadership

Dr. Kathleen Vigness-Raposa, who joined INSPIRE in 2020, is a marine scientist with expertise in bioacoustics, spatial modeling, and impact assessments of anthropogenic activities in the marine environment. Over the course of her career, she has authored numerous reports assessing the impacts of anthropogenic activities on marine mammals, sea turtles, and fishes; predicted marine mammal distributions and abundances; led passive underwater acoustic monitoring teams on research cruises; and taught graduate-level courses at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Vigness-Raposa participated in the acoustics and electromagnetic studies for the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP), as well as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management studies of the underwater sound from construction and operation of the Block Island Wind facility. She uses innovative techniques to model and predict environmental impacts and co-created the “Discovery of Sound in the Sea” website. Dr. Vigness-Raposa has more than twenty years of experience in environmental modeling and fieldwork.

Principal Acoustic Modeler Dr. Andrew Millar joined the GDG Offshore Marine Advisory Team in November 2023. He has over 10 years’ experience working in the energy sector. Prior to joining GDG, Dr. Millar was a Principal Environmental Engineer at a market leading advisory company where he was responsible for managing and conducting underwater noise modeling studies, environmental impact assessments, and permit applications for offshore oil and gas and wind farm projects. He has conducted noise modeling and impact assessments for a variety of activities associated with oil and gas and offshore wind farm developments including seismic surveys, geophysical site surveys, piling, drilling, and unexploded ordnance removal. Since joining GDG, Dr. Millar has developed the GDG proprietary underwater noise modeling software for estimating potential impacts to marine receptors from offshore activities.

Senior Scientist Dr. Cristian Graupe joined INSPIRE in January 2024. Dr. Graupe has extensive knowledge simulating acoustic propagation in complex environments to characterize unique sound sources and environmental influence on the sound field. He also has a comprehensive skill set in signal processing, analyzing acoustic measurements to detect, characterize, and track acoustic source signatures. He has over five years experience deploying stationary and autonomous systems to collect calibrated acoustic measurements for sound field analysis and passive acoustic monitoring. As an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Graupe is a motivated educator in underwater acoustics and signal processing. In support of the offshore wind industry, He has performed data collection, analysis, and authored sound field verification reports for acoustics associated with impact hammer piling operations. At INSPIRE, Dr. Graupe joins our team of marine acoustic experts, expanding the scope of acoustic services INSIRE offers our clients.