About 75,000 recycled concrete cubes have been installed around the foundation of a wind turbine at the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm, about 13 kilometres off the Sussex coast in the English Channel. The unusual installation is designed to do two jobs at once: protect the turbine foundation from seabed erosion, known as scour, and create additional spaces that marine organisms can potentially use as shelter or attachment points. The cubes replace conventional rock-based scour protection at one turbine and form part of a project called Reef Enhancement for Scour Protection, or RESP. The developers say the design could provide more than twice the potential habitat volume of traditional rock protection, although the ecological benefits are still being monitored.
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