One of the aims of the WIN@sea project is to investigates how offshore wind farms influence marine biodiversity, with a special focus on the Atlantic cod — a species currently under considerable pressure in the Western Baltic. At Kriegers Flak, DTU Aqua has conducted underwater camera surveys to document fish presence and species composition around the scour protection at turbine foundations, as well as at nearby reference areas. The project aims to improve our understanding of how large-scale offshore infrastructure affects fish communities and to foster methods for a sustainable coexistence between energy production and marine ecosystems.

To achieve this — while complying with the strict safety regulations within offshore wind farms — we have developed a new submersible camera system that can be deployed and retrieved using a conventional fishing rod. Thanks to the crew of Vattenfall’s crew transfer vessel (CTV), we successfully collected data with the dropdown cameras within the wind farm during the summer of 2025 — data that is now awaiting further analysis.