Turning data INto evidence

What is PEBL's marine biodiversity monitoring service?
PEBL runs camera-led biodiversity monitoring programmes for marine sites in the UK. We design the study, supply the underwater cameras and environmental sensors, either deploy them ourselves or train your team to, then analyse everything that comes back and deliver an auditable dataset and a written technical report.

Who is the service for?
Seaweed and shellfish farms, marine restoration projects, offshore renewable developers, environmental consultancies and research institutions. In short, any operator who needs defensible evidence about what lives at their site and how it is changing.

Does PEBL do the fieldwork, or do we?
Either. We deploy directly where a site calls for it, and for other sites we run an on-site training day so your team or a local community partner can do the in-water work and keep that capability. Study design, analysis and reporting are always done by PEBL.

Do we have to buy the equipment?
No. All hardware is included in a monitoring programme. You can also buy or rent SubCam cameras and GrowProbe sensors separately if you would rather run monitoring yourself.

What is the difference between buying a SubCam and using the monitoring service?
Buying a SubCam gives you the instrument. The service gives you the study design, expert species analysis, environmental context and a report. The analysis is what turns footage into evidence a regulator or funder will accept.

How much does marine biodiversity monitoring cost?
A camera-led monitoring season starts from £5,000 a year. Every programme is scoped to the site, so these are typical figures rather than fixed prices.

Can you analyse footage we already have?
Yes. Processing-only costs £75 per hour of footage and includes marine-biologist review, species identification and quality control. 

Why do you publish your prices when most competitors don't?
We are a Community Interest Company and affordability is part of our purpose. A small operator should be able to find out whether they can afford monitoring without having to book a sales call first.

Why is PEBL less expensive than an environmental consultancy?
We build our own hardware, so instrument cost is a fraction of commercial equivalents, and every species identification is made by a marine biologist, with machine-assisted tooling in development.

Can you help us find funding for monitoring?
Yes. Most of the monitoring we have delivered was paid for by a grant rather than an operating budget. Where the monitoring genuinely fits the project, we will apply alongside you as a named monitoring partner and write the methodology, evidence plan and budget lines for the bid.

What is a BACI or control-impact study?
BACI stands for Before-After-Control-Impact. You measure your site alongside one or more comparable control sites, before and after whatever you want to assess. Without a control you cannot tell whether an observed change was caused by your site or by a wider seasonal or regional shift.

Why use more than one control site?
Multiple controls change the question from whether your site is different from one other place to whether your site is outside the range of natural variation. That is a far stronger claim and much harder to challenge.

How long does a monitoring programme need to run?
A single season gives a strong spatial comparison between your site and its controls. Two to three years gives a genuine before-and-after trend. Programmes are normally structured as seasonal deployments repeated year on year.

What data streams can you combine?
Video, passive acoustics, eDNA and water quality, all recorded against a single shared timeline. Laboratory panels for nutrients, heavy metals and seaweed tissue chemistry can be added where a project needs them.

What is eDNA monitoring and when is it useful?
eDNA metabarcoding identifies species from genetic traces left in water or sediment samples, detecting species that never pass in front of a camera. It works best on soft, relatively undisturbed sediment and is much less useful on rocky or heavily disturbed seabed.

When do we need passive acoustic monitoring?
When cetaceans are known or expected in the area. A passive acoustic logger records porpoise and dolphin echolocation clicks continuously and distinguishes them from boat sonar, building a year-round picture that no camera or diver survey can produce.

What species can you actually detect?
On one full annual programme our cameras recorded 50 distinct species and lowest-identified taxonomic units across a single farm and its control site, from resident crabs, brittle stars and gobies to seasonal shoals of whiting, pouting and scad. Camera monitoring covers fish and larger invertebrates, and eDNA extends that to species that cameras cannot see.

Does the equipment need servicing during a season?
Programmes include swap-out units, so a failed or fouled camera is exchanged rather than left in the water, and we plan the schedule around your site.

What do we actually receive at the end?
A written technical report setting out what was found, how it was measured, what changed relative to the controls and what the limitations are. It is written to go straight to a regulator, funder or certifier without translation. You also get access to your data hosted on pebl-data.cloud.

Can our regulator or funder access the data directly?
Yes. Data hosted on pebl-data.cloud supports access for your own team, your funder and your regulator.

Can this evidence support a marine licence application?
Yes. Our monitoring is named in the licence application documents of a community farm that subsequently secured a twenty-year marine licence.

Do you work with offshore wind developers?
Yes, usually as a survey subcontractor to the consultancy that holds the client relationship. We run the monitoring fleet and do the analysis, and you keep the client.

Where do you work?
UK coastal waters. PEBL is based in Swansea, Wales, and runs monitoring programmes at sites across the UK.

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What regulatory changes are driving demand for this kind of monitoring right now?

Three UK changes are live. Biodiversity Net Gain becomes mandatory for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects from 2 November 2026, though it applies onshore down to mean low water, so it drives ports, landfall and intertidal works rather than the offshore array itself. The Habitats and Species (Offshore Wind) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2026 came into force on 21 May 2026 and require success criteria, monitoring and adaptive management for compensatory measures. The Marine Recovery Fund published its terms on 6 July 2026. Together these create a funded, dated reason to commission monitoring now rather than later.

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What can these methods not tell you?

We are honest about the limits. A fixed camera measures temporal change well, it is not a substitute for full taxonomic survey coverage. MaxN from video is a relative abundance index, not a measure of absolute fish density. Species naming is done by a person, because automated classification does not yet transfer reliably between different sites. Passive acoustic monitoring gives relative indices and presence data, not calibrated absolute sound levels suitable for a formal environmental impact assessment. eDNA works well on soft, undisturbed sediment and is much less useful on rocky or heavily disturbed seabed.