Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

Artificial structures

Artificial structures such as offshore wind farms and oil platforms form hotspots of benthic life, which extend into the water column and are attractive for fishes and birds. This has obvious implications for the local ecosystem both in the water and nearby sediments.

Artificial hard substrates such as offshore wind farms and oil platforms provide a substrate for a variety of benthic animals, e.g. mussels, anemones and tunicates. The high biomass of the organisms that colonise these artificial reefs are attractive for fishes and birds. Also, the presence of the fouling fauna will locally increase or decrease the deposition of organic matter to the bottom, affecting the sediments and changing the benthic communities. We are interested in how these systems change the functioning of the water column and the sediment in their vicinity.

Scale-dependent impact of wind mills
Windmills have impact on ecosystem functioning at several scales, from local effects of one wind mill to the large scale of multiple windmill farms. Together with our Belgian colleagues in the Face-It project, we collect data in the vicinity of windmills to quantify their effects on biogeochemistry and food web structure. We then develop models that are used to upscale the local observations to the scale of the Southern Bight of the North Sea.

Global change and multi-use of wind mill farms
Artificial structures like windmills have an effect on the environment (mixing of the water column and increased turbidity), in addition to the combined effects of climate change, such as acidification and higher water temperatures. Increasing the purposes of wind-mill farms, for instance via aquaculture activities, will also increase the impact on the environment. In cooperation with our Belgian colleagues in the PERSUADE project), we investigate the combined effects of Ocean wind farms (OWFs), and global change in the Belgian part of the North Sea. We also make tools to assess the feasibility of commercial activities (such as mussel farming in combination with the exploitation of OWF.