Finally, we had a long-anticipated weather window with minimum waves and wind – and full sunshine! The relatively calm sea lasted for 5 hours, and this was just enough for Mads (Kerteminde Seafarm), Lene and Teis (Aarhus University, Ecoscience) to sail out from Hvide Sande and deploy approximately 50 meters of lines seeded with sugarkelp on the experimental system west of the turbines in the Vattenfall windfarm, Vesterhav Syd. A curios seal carefully inspected the deployment.
The sugarkelp was deployed on the 24th of October and is now growing over the winter from a size of only a few mm to – hopefully – more than one meter in late May where we expect to harvest. The harvested seaweed will be analysed for the content of nutrients in order to estimate how much nutrients can be captured from the sea and reused for food, feed and materials via seaweed cultivation, and for various metals and environmentally harmful substances to make sure that the quality criteria are met.
If we have enough biomass, we will distribute between local initiatives for developing new local food products.
This is the second season of experimental seaweed cultivation in the Vesterhav Syd windfarm. The seeded lines are produced by Aarhus University from sugarkelp collected near Thyborøn.
