RWE, together with its partners, has launched the Sustainable ecosystem approach in Monitoring the marine environment (SeaMe) project at its Kaskasi offshore wind farm off the German coast.
The three-year project will be carried out in collaboration with the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB), the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), BioConsult SH, the Danish company DHI, and the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
The joint project will investigate how innovative techniques can make monitoring less invasive and more sustainable compared to the current monitoring techniques, said RWE.
Whereas planes and ships are routinely used to monitor birds and mammals, SeaMe aims to replace these methods with a drone equipped with an AI-based camera system.
SeaMe will also collect water samples and analyse them for environmental DNA. AI-based fish video monitoring is planned to be performed using an autonomous underwater vehicle.
Both methods are said to replace the traditional means of sampling the fish using nets, making the entire process less invasive.
With advancements in technology and improved data collection and management, the SeaMe project will allow RWE to consider the ecosystem as a whole, the company said.
One of the goals of the SeaMe project is to also monitor key components of the marine ecosystems that are usually left out of conventional monitoring programmes, such as small phytoplankton (microscopic algae) and zooplankton (e.g., krill), according to RWE.
In addition, a series of physical parameters such as temperature, salinity, and oxygen will be measured to explain any possible changes in the distribution and abundance of species.
All tests will take place at the 342 MW Kaskasi offshore wind farm, which is located 35 kilometres off the coast of the German Heligoland Island.
The offshore wind farm has been operating since December 2022 and was officially inaugurated in 2023. According to RWE, the project can supply 400,000 households a year with green electricity.
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