Successful repair after February storms
2020-04-17
During February the structures at our offshore North Sea Innovation Lab (NSIL) had to face multiple severe storms with waves up to 6 metres high. You can probably imagine these were exciting times for us, but we were also very curious about how the installations had coped with this type of weather.
At the moment there are three installations at our North Sea Innovation Lab: a seaweed cultivation model, the NSIL data buoy and a mussel module. On the 16th of March we had already visited our offshore NSIL and discovered that all installations were still in place, but we did observe some damage on the seaweed module.
Our NSIL-team set out again on the 31st of March, this time with the Anteos (Sima Charters) and a RIB-boat (Noordzee Charters). We managed to fix the net cultivation system. Mission accomplished! Unfortunately, we did have to conclude that the sawtooth cultivation system was beyond repair, so this system will be out of use this season. We did however take samples of the seaweed growing on this system and it will be analysed for research purposes.
All in all we gained valuable insights on how the main construction behaves during the stormy season. We learned about (potential) weaknesses and how we can strengthen these in the future.
Photo credits: Arjan Korving (Noordzee Charters)
