RESP – Reef Enhanced Scour Protection

The reef cube® is a patented proven technology already used in a number of subsea and intertidal applications to protect man-made assets whilst delivering nature-positive habitat enhancement.  RESP stands for Reef Enhanced Scour Protection and uses modified reef cubes to provide seabed scour protection whilst providing hard substrate, chambers and complex surface texture that stimulates marine growth, provides sheltered nursery areas for eggs and juveniles and anchor points for colonisation by a range of flora and fauna.

The two year RESP project kicked off in November 2022 and will deliver at scale deployment of at least 6,000 reef cubes deployed around 3 offshore monopiles with 3 others left as-is to act as ecological control comparison sites for ecological impact monitoring. The project involves significant theoretical and physical modelling to establish the operating envelop that the reef cubes can be deployed within to meet typical scour protection performance standard requirements and impact monitoring to verify how their use promotes marine life and specifically the abundance of key target species in and around an offshore wind farm.  We are also optimising the design and mix to meet scour protection, drop testing and ecological enhancement drivers.   Deployment will be by utilising a standard DP2 fall pipe vessel, typically fitted with a 500mm or 1000mm fall pipe, which sets up the upper limit on the size of reef cube deployable via this method. The product is currently at TRL 6 and will be at TRL 8/9 by the end of this project (Oct 2024).