Marine Renewable Energy Directed KE Fellowship: Biofouling in the UK Marine Renewable Energy Industry

When man-made structures, such as marine renewable energy devices, are deployed in the sea they are quickly colonised by communities of organisms growing on exposed surfaces. This marine growth, or biofouling, is often unwanted from an engineering perspective and can have consequences for structural integrity, efficiency, maintenance and functioning of devices. Non-native species are also commonly found on man-made structures, making biofouling a potential biosecurity risk and a possible vector for species invasions.

Factors such as the type of species in the biofouling community, the geographical location and the seasonality of organism settlement and growth lead to a high degree of variability in biofouling properties such as mass, thickness and texture. At the moment marine renewable energy SME's conduct most of their design, efficiency calculations and maintenance planning based on very basic figures for biofouling thickness which do not take into account variability. Technical standards acknowledge the limitations of existing guidance and recommend that whenever possible, site-specific measurements should be used. Unfortunately, due to the newness of the industry, this data is often not available and SMEs and engineers are working with little more than a "best guess" when calculating for the effects of marine growth on devices.

Jen Loxton recently co-hosted a workshop which discussed biofouling on marine renewable energy devices with attendees spanning academia, regulatory bodies, and industry. Together this group identified 119 issues associated with biofouling with operational, financial or environmental impacts. A key priority which was identified to help solve many of these issues was improved knowledge exchange between science, engineering and marine industry. It was acknowledged that there is a lot of biofouling knowledge in the scientific and industrial communities but there is currently no pathway for getting this to the right people to inform renewable energy device design and maintenance decisions. It is this gap in communication which Jen aims to address in this KE project.

During the fellowship Jen will develop and launch a comprehensive online resource which will consolidate biofouling science in an accessible and industry relevant format for the UK marine renewable energy community. This resource will consist of:

- A website of biofouling knowledge, translated for industry
- An interactive tool/app powered by a database of UK biofouling distribution and characteristics

The website will provide a biofouling "one-stop-shop" for stakeholders associated with the UK marine renewable energy industry and help to inform engineering and operational decisions and increase awareness of potential environmental considerations. It is anticipated that it will increase the reach and impact of biofouling science.

A comprehensive database will be populated with biofouling science and species distribution data and will power the interactive tool/app. A user would specify location, deployment type and available observations of biofouling and the tool will generate a tailored suite of industrially relevant statistics and possible management techniques. Full specifications for the tool will be determined during the fellowship but examples of possible outputs include maximum biomass, thickness and rugosity of fouling, expected seasonal variations and known non-native species in the vicinity. The database will continue to grow during the life of the fellowship and beyond through live links with UK databases (e.g. NBN gateway) and the addition of user specified biofouling observations.

Information for the fellowship will be gathered from academia, regulatory bodies and from across the maritime industries, including oil & gas, shipping, leisure boating and the aquaculture industries. The fellow will include data from previous NERC projects (e.g. EBAO and FlowBec), expanding the impact of this research.