Project

The ocean covers over 70% surface of the earth, however, we have to say that so far human being knows still very little under these waters, although we believe there should be plenty of resources we could adopt if we could find out some safe and cost-effective technology to do so. Subsea robotics has been helping human beings to extend their capabilities in recent decades, thanks to the rapid technology development. Subsea robots can commit difficult and/or dangerous tasks beyond human's natural capability, such as deepwater sea floor scanning, oil & gas exploitation and exploration, subsea pipeline installation and inspection, as well as handling some catastrophic disasters.

The proposed equipment can certainly provide us with a solid and professional subsea robotic platform, not only to verify our so-far obtained results, but also to inspire new thinking and ideas, as well as to provide relevant industries a lab-sized testing robot protocol.

A common challenge for structures submerged in water, such as offshore oil and gas platforms and wind turbine foundations, is marine fouling. The fouling consists of, for example, mussels and sea grass, which settle permanently on the structure and thereby increase both the volume and roughness of the material. This causes increased stress and fatigue of the structure, primarily due to increased wave loads and the weight of the fouling. Furthermore, the fouling complicates inspections of the structure, which are important for documenting the durability of the material. These disadvantages are reduced by cleaning the fouling off at regular intervals. Alternatively, the structure is oversized in the design phase to overcome the loads from marine fouling. Both methods are expensive for the production and/or operation of the structures and thus for energy production. In this project, two major players within Denmark's strengths, oil and gas (Total E&P) and wind (Siemens Gamesa), have joined forces to support the development of an improved concept for inspecting and combating marine fouling. The concept is based on improved robotic technology, which will raise the level of automation, as well as a compact setup that makes the operation independent of large environmentally polluting vessels, which the clean-up campaigns today depend on. The solution will finally be tested in the North Sea and will raise the technology from TRL 4 to TRL 7.

In Jammerbugt in Skagerrak, some of the most intensively fished Danish sea areas are found. The area is particularly characterised by the fact that all of the most important types of Danish fishing methods for demersal fishing for food fish take place. This applies to gillnets, which are fixed fishing gears, as well as beam trawls, purse seines and trawls, which are bottom-towed fishing gears. The different gears physically affect the seabed in different ways. Fixed fishing gears have relatively low impact and are therefore not included in this project. The habitats on the seabed in the area and the fauna associated with them have not been studied in particular detail. This is important in terms of being able to assess the effect of bottom-towed fishing gears.

There has therefore been a desire to have the impacts from bottom-towed fishing gears, with a main focus on beam trawls, investigated. Through monitoring work in 2023, this research project has investigated fishing activities, the impact of bottom-towed gears, habitats, fauna and biodiversity in general. Many different monitoring tools have been used to provide a broader understanding of these conditions, including: sidescan sonar, vessel satellite data, underwater drone, underwater video camera, towed Ockelmans sled, Van Veen grab for bottom samples, sound recordings and e-DNA. Taken together, the studies provide new general insight into marine nature and impacts from fishing activities with bottom-tow fishing gear in Jammerbugt.