A new open access article in Nature titled “Biodiversity Information of benthic Species at ARtificial structures – BISAR.” Authors from across Europe, in addition to authors from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and INSPIRE Environmental, compiled data on benthic communities from various studies and projects on 34 artificial structures (including offshore wind turbines) and surrounding soft bottom habitat in the North Sea. The result is a quality-checked data product with a total of 3864 samples across 890 taxa. Various stakeholders (e.g., industry, public authorities, research) will profit from the BISAR data collection as the greatest challenge in an era of blue growth is to get access to data from various sources. The paper can be accessed here.
