Van Oord and Ace Aquatec have formed a strategic partnership whereby the FaunaGuard, an acoustic device to protect marine fauna near marine construction activities, is now made available to all marine contractors and other interested parties.
The FaunaGuard can be used during all offshore activities such as rock installation, piling, drilling, blasting and large-scale dredging operations to safely and temporarily deter marine fauna species using specialised underwater acoustics, Van Oord said.
Until now, the device was only used by Van Oord on several projects, such as the Gemini offshore wind farm in the Dutch part of the North Sea.
The porpoise module is the first module of the FaunaGuard that is now commercially available.
In collaboration, Ace Aquatec and Van Oord will bring the other modules to market in the coming months and years and will continue research to develop further species-specific modules.