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Six years ago, two Flemish scientific institutes teamed up with mussel farmers to conduct an experiment at the beach resort of La Panne.
Belgium’s mussels have satisfied hungry people for years, but experiments are currently underway to see if they can also protect Belgium’s North Sea coast.
The recipe no longer involves white wine soup and a bowl of salty fries, but it does call for an undersea reef barrier to divert currents from the sandy shoreline.
Six years ago, two Flemish scientific institutes teamed up with mussel farmers to conduct an experiment at the beach resort of La Panne.
Biologists now hope to reveal promising results and attract government funding to develop large-scale coral reefs along the 40-kilometre (24-mile) coast.
The idea is to run a cable along the drop between shallow coastal waters and the North Sea, creating a habitat for naturally occurring shellfish.
Powerful currents stir up the sand in this intermediate region, but can be disrupted if shellfish populations growing in vertical cords begin to erect a living barrier.
And when the bundles become too heavy to withstand the man-made structures, they clump together and fall to the ocean floor, opening up new natural ecosystems that provide long-term protection.
“Around the mussels, all kinds of living habitats have developed,” explains Alexia Semeraro, a researcher at ILVO’s Institute of Agriculture and Fisheries Research.
extreme storm
“Biogenic reefs” not only stabilize suspended sediments in churning water and limit erosion, but also provide a more biodiverse habitat.
“We need to have a portfolio of solutions for the increasingly frequent and severe storms that occur as a result of climate change,” said Thomas Sterks of Belgian multinational DEME.
DEME, an environmental remediation, dredging and offshore construction company, is currently helping scientists build an “aquatic biological protection line.”
Coral reefs will not replace the work of filling Belgian beaches with sand transport, but they could help cushion extreme storm surges accelerated by climate change.
“We want to restore the entire ecosystem. It’s the entire ecosystem that needs to be helped to withstand extreme storms,” Sterks said.
“Biogenic coral reefs are a tool to add to coastal ecosystems and are our first line of defense.”
Buoys and posts that had been holding a network of cables in place since 2017 have fallen off the coast of La Panne, a popular resort and picturesque spot set against sand dunes near the French border.
It is hoped that the coral reefs below will remain as a natural base protecting the coast and be classified as a nature reserve.
And in Ostend, marine biologists are working on a new plan to deploy seagrass, seaweed and sandworms in a new natural buffer zone to further strengthen the area.