Offshore staff
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — Van Oord has placed four oyster tables at the site of the Luchterduinen wind farm in the Dutch North Sea, operated by Eneco.
These are structures made of concrete and other material on which live oysters are placed, as part of the Rich North Sea program that is designed to restore oyster reefs to the area.
According to Van Oord, until about 200 years ago, large oyster reefs were scattered over 20% of the Dutch North Sea, but hardly any remain now. They are said to be important to the underwater ecosystem.
The design of the new oyster table design, which followed four years of research, has been tailored to the conditions at Luchterduinen, where there are strong currents and large volumes of sand.
The tables, weighing more than 3,000 kg, are weighted at the bottom for extra stability and are installed on the scour protection around the turbine to prevent them from sinking into the sandy seabed.
Instead of being placed in baskets, the live oysters are glued to vertical rods to ensure they have sufficient fresh water and oxygen to survive and reproduce.
Oysters placed on the tables may release larvae next year that can settle on a hard surface (i.e., the scour protection around the wind turbines), giving reefs a chance to develop. Future monitoring missions will examine their growth, survival and reproduction.
According to Eneco's Marin van Regteren, the first pilot project under the Rich North Sea program started in 2018 at Luchterduinen, 23 km from the coast at Noordwijk aan Zee, and involved installing oyster cages and reef cubes at the wind farm, which had been operational since 2015.
The new design tables are based on lessons learned from the previous projects at the wind farm site.
11.04.2022
