Life at the sea floor

Embedding of wind-farm related filtration from blue mussels into a regional ocean modeling system (Slavik et al. 2019). Graphics: Lemmen/ Hereon

Blue mussels filter a large part of the North Sea water. We reconstructed the abundance and biomass of this filter feeder in the North Sea (Lemmen 2018) and we looked at the opportunities for new habitats on the offshore wind farm structures currently being built. We find that this epifouling blue mussels contribute significantly to the total abundance of this species, and we estimate their local and regional effects on net primary production (Slavik et al. 2019). Publikationen

Breathing of the sea floor

Communities on top of the sea floor - epifauna - and within the sea floor - infauna - can adopt their position within the sediment at long timescales, thereby establishing typical communities, or at short times scales, exploiting adaptive behaviour of organisms. Typically, with tidal currents changing in strenght, the community shows ups and downs, the "breathing" of the sea flloor.