Living Windfarms Project workshop
Our first Living Windfarms Project hybrid workshop took place at the University of Essex, featuring speakers from the University, as well as Bournemouth University, the Rich North Sea, and Exo Engineering. The workshop began with introductions to the project and partner organisations before exploring the interactions between scour protection and biodiversity in the North Sea.
The first of our guest speakers, Eline van Onselen from project partner the Rich North Sea, clearly defined the scope of the project. Eline began by illustrating the changes in North Sea biodiversity since the industrial revolution. Unprecedented upscaling of fishing vessels has seen a detrimental impact to marine life, emphasising the need for initiatives which focus on increasing biodiversity. The realisation of wind energy potential has seen extensive wind farm developments in the North Sea, with little regard to improving biodiversity so far.
The main aim of the Living Windfarms Project is to establish mass production of ExoReef scour protection to deliver less environmentally damaging methods of protecting windfarm infrastructure. ExoReef scour protection functions as a replacement for depleted hard substrate, which many organisms require for colonisation. These aims are aligned with legislation being implemented in England under the Environment Act 2021, which requires all new planned projects to achieve a 10% biodiversity net gain.
Example table comparing the use of various monitoring methods (Credit: Rick Stafford, Bournemouth University)
Two other guest speakers also joined us at the conference, the first of which being Prof. Rick Stafford from Bournemouth University. Rick spoke about the impact of environmental conditions on community assemblages, which can be affected by factors such as seasonal changes or reef depth. Regarding artificial reefs, there is still some uncertainty surrounding the bioreceptivity to different types of concrete and the influence this may have on final community structure. This will be more extensively studied in the years to come, using various methods such as Baited Remote Underwater Video (BRUV), Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV) and scuba diving. Each method has associated advantages and disadvantages, with each method varying in suitability between different sites.
Prof. Alex Dumbrell from the University of Essex illustrated the future potential for understanding ecosystem responses to change in the form of biomonitoring. This involves using automated sampling to extract DNA from an ecosystem to monitor the changes over time. This has various advantages, such as improving our understanding of interactions between ecosystems and helping us to predict scenario outcomes more accurately. Using DNA to monitor changes in ecosystems is highly beneficial as it is fully scalable, can account for ‘cryptic’ species which are difficult to observe and will minimise disruption. Under-sampling and contamination represent potential disadvantages to this method but can be minimised using control variables. The need for more stringent ecosystem monitoring is evident, with biomonitoring representing a promising new technique for the future.
The conference concluded with Exo-Engineering’s Will Melhuish laying out the roadmap for how we plan to achieve the aims of the project. The design priorities regarding cost, ecosystem benefit and time efficiency must be balanced with functionality. This means that the product must perform its designed role whilst also delivering its intended ecosystem benefits. Durability is also a design priority; we conduct rigorous testing of our ExoReef products to ensure they are of sufficient strength to survive transportation and deployment.
The workshop provided a platform of discussion between the 40 participants attending in person and remotely, from academics to windfarm industry leaders and policy makers. Additionally, attendees were able to take part in interactive polls to gauge perceptions of deployment methods and the most suitable features to facilitate biocolonisation.
