The availability of land for energy installations is dropping as the industry expands.
The increasing demand for electricity is pushing solar power installations further into open waters.
Floating platforms are being tested in the Dutch Sea. Utility companies are considering whether solar installations can share space and transmission lines with offshore wind turbines.
Placing the artificial structures in the open ocean creates submerged habitats. Now, researchers are inspecting a pilot array to log the marine taxa settling on the frames.
How samples are gathered at the pilot location for empirical data
Wageningen Marine Research’s team published their field survey in the Journal of Sea Research. The test array was constructed by Oceans of Energy and was moored around 7.5 miles off the coast of The Hague in the Netherlands.
Biological growth documentation saw specialized dive teams sampling 18 individual floats.
Surface areas were measured and allocated, and the submerged sections of the platform were scraped to collect whatever organisms and fauna were attached for lab analysis on land.
In these regions of the ocean, natural rock formations did not exist. The platforms add surfaces where none were previously available.
The floating structures are constantly moving in the wave action and currents, and sunlight is an ecological factor.
Researchers gathered direct data on biological fouling in the early stages of infrastructure colonization. This study has developed into one of the first comprehensive, quantitative species inventories for floating platforms in these conditions.
The biofouling breakdown revealed non-native species
When the laboratory analysis data was collated, it showed the presence of 47 distinct marine animal taxa across the 18 floats that were scraped.
Arthropods were the most abundant organisms in the count, with tiny amphipods in the genus Jassa being the most common. When it came to weight, mollusks made up the bulk of the biological weight hanging off the platforms. Blue mussels were the most common among this class.
Other organisms logged in the survey included hydroids, flatworms, starfish, bryozoans, and sea urchins.
Researchers identified 12 species that were not native to the local ecosystem. Some of these were non-indigenous barnacles, alien sea anemones, and introduced amphipods.
The non-native species outnumbered the native animals. However, they made up a smaller proportion of the total weight.
The rapid colonization of the floaters demonstrates that floating solar arrays can provide artificial hard-substrate habitat for a mix of indigenous and non-native species.
However, researchers emphasize that whether these structures act as functional stepping-stones for marine life across the North Sea remains a hypothesis requiring long-term monitoring to confirm.
Furthermore, because the North Sea already contains numerous hard surfaces—such as wind turbines, oil and gas platforms, and shipwrecks—the specific contribution of floating solar to regional species dispersal is currently unresolved.
Operational impact and conservation conclusions
Heavy biological growth creates real engineering challenges for commercial solar developers. Dense mussel colonies add significant weight to floating platform frames over time.
This added weight changes platform buoyancy, increases drag from ocean waves, and puts heavy strain on submerged mooring lines.
While biofouling introduces additional weight and structural loads that must be factored into system engineering, routine hull scraping is not required for this array.
Oceans of Energy intentionally omitted antifouling coatings and designed its floaters to withstand the expected wet weight of marine organisms across the system’s operational lifespan, allowing biofouling to accumulate naturally without maintenance interventions. However, maintenance crews need cleaning procedures that remove biofouling without harming surrounding water quality or localized wild marine communities.
There are regional ecological risks
At the same time, the presence of 12 non-native species points to regional ecological risks. Submerged floats act as stepping-stone habitats, letting foreign organisms travel across open ocean basins.
The researchers concluded that while floating solar panels support diverse marine communities, continuous ecological monitoring is necessary as farms scale up.
Future engineering plans must balance long-term structural durability, routine hull scraping, and project costs against the ecological consequences of placing permanent artificial structures into open marine waters.
All the details of the study can be found here: Mavraki, N., Bos, O. G., van der Weide, B., Bittner, O., Vlaswinkel, B. M., Nalmpanti, M., & Coolen, J. W. (2025). Inventory of the biofouling community on the first offshore solar energy farm in the North Sea. Journal of Sea Research, 102627
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