German Lower Saxony Funds Research Project on Lobster Settlement at Offshore Wind Farms

With just under EUR 700,000, Lower Saxony is supporting a pilot project for the settlement of the European lobsters at the offshore wind farm “Riffgat”.

Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, have started to rear 3,000 lobsters, which they will release back into the water in 2014. They want to investigate whether lobsters successfully colonize between the wind turbines.

With the construction of wind farms at sea new structures are installed on the seabed of the North Sea. Sand and silt soils dominate the ground in the German Bight and wind turbines offer a new settlement area for the so-called hard substrate communities.

An example of hard bottom dwellers is the European lobster, which is hiding in caves during daytime as it is a nocturnal animal. Researchers at the Biological Institute Helgoland, for the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research want to release lobsters in this emerging habitat. 

The state of Lower Saxony, represented by the NLWKN (Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal Defence and Nature Conservation), funded the three-year pilot project with just under EUR 700,000. For the use of these funds, a contract was concluded between the NLWKN and the AWI.

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Offshore WIND Staff, April 19, 2013; Image: AWI