A team of researchers went twice to offshore wind farm Borssele III & IV for monitoring of 2,400 released flat oysters. The oyster tables were placed on the base of some wind turbines in October 2020.
By The Rich North Sea
A team of researchers went twice to offshore wind farm Borssele III & IV for monitoring of 2,400 released flat oysters. The oyster tables were placed on the base of some wind turbines in October 2020.
In addition to the survival, growth and presence of oyster larvae, the researchers from De Rijke Noordzee and Eurofins AquaSense also investigated biodiversity. For this they used E-DNA traces in the water and an underwater camera. The underwater videos show a lot of life around the rock collapse and foundations of the wind turbines. A total of 65 animal species were recognized with the video footage and another 24 species groups were found. The analysis shows that the development of the species composition is still ongoing in the young wind farm. This summer, the researchers will return for the next monitoring. We hope to see that the first oysters have settled on the shell layer and stones around the wind turbine.
The images in the following video give you a selection of the animal species that are present in the Borssele wind farm.
