OUTFLOW

The VLIZ Marine Science Day is the largest marine scientific event in Belgium. Great to see our PhD student Esther Cepeda Gamella presenting here work on developing methodology to determine the contribution of offshore wind farm fouling fauna to the local organic matter pool

De Blauwe Cluster is an umbrella organisation, supporting the innovative Blue Economy in Flanders. As such, they are an important stakeholder for OUTFLOW, as it would be great if scientific evidence underpins a sustainable way of using marine resources. We are therefore very happy that the cross-border cooperation between OUTFLOW and the Dutch FOOTPRINT project came to their attention, and is now mentioned in their newsletter. See https://www.blauwecluster.be/nieuws/internationaal-onderzoek-naar-de-impact-van-windmolenparken (in Dutch)

The OUTFLOW team has a very busy week. Thanks to the scientific diving team of Flanders Marine Institute, we are obtaining macrofauna samples from very close distances to the sea floor. These are not obtained by regular gear such as Van Veen grabs or box corer, but by 'vacuum cleaning" a fixed surface at the sea floor, and bringing the sediment to the surface, where it is carefully sieved by OUTFLOW team members Ulrike Braeckman and Bart Beuselinck.

Following our large-scale campaign with RV Pelagia, RV Simon Stevin and RV Belgica of last week, we are now performing detailed measurements around a single wind turbine in the C-Power offshore wind farm. Supported by a scientific diving team (the picture shows them returning from a dive), we collected water, sediment and organisms from the turbine and its very close environment for characterisation of organic matter sources in water and sediment, and describing the biogeochemical properties of the sea floor.

We had an exciting OUTFLOW week last week, as we joined forces with the Dutch FOOTPRINT budget to collect the necessary data to calculate an SPM budget for an entire wind farm zone, encompassing multiple wind farms in Belgian and Dutch marine waters. In order to cover the wide geographic range, scientists from RBINS, UGent, NIOZ and VLIZ boarded 3 research vessels (RV Belgica, RV Simon Stevin and RV Pelagia) for joint measurements in and outside the windfarm zone. The picture shows RV Simon Stevin and RV Belgica working closely together.

Next week, OUTFLOW will join forces with the Dutch FOOTPRINT project in an attempt to measure the cumulative effect of multiple offshore wind farms on biological and oceanographic properties of the water column. Therefore, scientists from RBINS, VLIZ, UGent, Deltares and the Royal NIOZ will be on board of RV Belgica, RV Simon Stevin and RV Pelagia in a unique sampling campaign where all research vessels will perform simultaneous measurements within and at the edges of the large windfarm zone at the Belgian-Dutch border. Earlier this week, we equipped our tripod with our sediment traps and acoustic meausuring devices. Before deploying it at sea, we put it in display for the public at large during the RV Belgica open days. Science is also about communicating toward society!

On Wednesday 11 May 2022, a wide audience consisting of scientists, policy and industry joined an event on marine carbon sequestration to assess how Belgian stakeholders could contribute to the development of Net Emission Technologies, while safeguarding the marine ecosystem. OUTFLOW scientist not only contributed to the organisation of the event, Ulrike Braeckman presented how marine sediments can act as important areas for carbons storage. This topic is indeed a focus topic in the OUTFLOW project. (Click in the picture to see the complete version)

OUTFLOW is about investigating the effects of offshore wind farms, by detailed sampling close to turbines, and using experiments and modelling for upscaling. Earlier this week, OUTFLOW scientists were on board of RV Simon Stevin to sample the end members of the organic matter pool in a wind farm. Rather impressive, being that close to a turbine...

OUTFLOW is about characterising faecal pellets of dominant organisms colonising offshore windfarms, and how these pellets affect the functioning of the local environment. Therefore, we need to collect a lot of faecal pellets. After one year of testing and improving, we can now say that your "faecal pellet harvester" is smoothly running. We now manage to collect a lot of faecal pellets from small amphipods in a couple of days. (Picture Esther Cepeda Gamella )

Despite the foggy weather, our new research vessel RV Belgica could carefully enter the C-Power offshore wind farm for a detailed sampling of sediments, along a gradient from 7m away from the scour protection layer to 150 m away. The campaign was succesful, the sediment cores again showed that mineralisation pathways close to a turbine are really different from what is to be expected in this kind of sediments. This picture (by Ulrike Braeckman ) shows the diving team returning to RV Belgica after sampling close to the wind turbine.

We designed our own trap to capture organic matter sinking through the water column. We used simple PVC and a 3D printer, and the final design was mounted on a rosette that remained in the water column under various conditions. As the test was successful, we will now mount them on tripods for deployment in the vicinity of a wind turbine, to sample organic matter produced by the fouling fauna on the turbines.

OUTFLOW started only one year ago, but we are glad to say that we our progress is really well. We managed to collect our 'pet species' from the offshore wind farms, and keep them in the lab to collect faecal pellets. We are now mainly active in the lab, where we work on developing markers for the different organic matter fractions. Why not checking the contribution of our PhD student Esther Cepeda Gamella to the VLIZ Marine Science Day 2022? See https://www.vliz.be/vmsd/en/posters/towards-estimating-contribution-fouling-fauna-marine-organic-matter-pool-offshore-wind

OUTFLOW is getting noticed by the Belgian Blue Economy community, the project is featured on their website: https://www.blauwecluster.be/project/outflow . We are always happy with this kind of attention, it makes our research relevant for society. We are always happy to answer questions and provide information.

The first OUTFLOW sampling event was a succes! OUTFLOW scientists joined forces with colleagues from the Dutch FOOTPRINT project to collect box core samples, SPI pictures and zoo- and phytoplankton sampled within the offshore wind farm of C-Power, at very close distances (150 - 250 m) to a turbine. Samples will serve methodological protocol development to be implemented at a later stage.