Artificial reef effect and fouling impacts on offshore wave power foundations and buoys – a pilot study

Colonisation of fish and crabs of wave energy foundations and the effects of manufactured holes – A field experiment

“…However, on the reef units in this experiment, species often dominating rocky bottoms in the area, such as cottids and wrasses (Pihl and Wennhage, 2002;Stål et al, 2007), were rare or absent. On other wave power foundations in the same area, similarly low numbers of these species were consistently recorded over three summer seasons (2006( -2008( , Langhamer et al, 2009). This indicates that, although this survey was conducted before the major period for settlement of year-juveniles of for example C. rupestris (i.e.…”

“…The reef modules, however, added relief to the seabed, and the steep walls of the foundations may offer a certain degree of shelter by eliminating angles of attack by predators and provide lee from currents. The foundations also serve as substrates for epibiota (Langhamer et al, 2009), as well as entrap detritus, and thereby enhance organic production (Wolfson et al, 1979).…”

“…The scope of the deployment of these devices was to conduct pilot-studies on environmental impacts and colonisation patterns of marine organisms on both wave power buoys and foundations (Langhamer et al, 2009). In spring 2006, the first wave energy converter (WEC) was deployed in the research site.…”

“…At the same time, there is an increasing interest in articulating the potentially positive aspects of creating artificial hard bottom habitats through the construction of offshore renewable energy devices (Wilhelmsson et al 2006a;Langhamer et al, 2009;Wilson and Elliot, 2009). The foundations of the energy devices will exclude trawling activities from the claimed area, and will also constitute "secondary artificial reefs" (Pickering et al, 1998) for fish and invertebrates and may also function as fish aggregating devices (FADs) (Wilhelmsson et al, 2006a;Fayram and de Risi, 2007;Wilhelmsson and Malm, 2008;Langhamer et al, 2009). These aspects of local impacts of offshore renewable energy development may, in theory, be beneficial for fisheries management and species conservation.…”

“…There are only a few examples of artificial reef studies in cold temperate waters (Baine, 2001), and even fewer have included experiments with different structural factors or, additionally, been conducted at the depths below 15 m, at higher latitudes (but see Wilhelmsson et al, 2006b;Langhamer et al, 2009). A pilot study by Langhamer and colleagues (2009), conducted in the Lysekil wave energy park, indicated a sparse colonisation by fish while edible crabs seemed more affected by the hard substrata deployed.…”