Robot finds 121 marine species beneath five Scottish wind turbines

A robotic submersible descended beneath 5 giant floating wind turbines off Scotland, moving around steel structures, cables and anchors that sit as much as 80 metres below the surface. Its high-definition camera recorded a surprisingly busy underwater community at the Hywind Scotland Pilot Park, about 25 kilometres east of Peterhead. Across 41 structures and associated components, the robot's footage revealed 121 different taxa, ranging from sea stars and sea urchins to mussels, anemones, fan worms, crustaceans and algae. The machine also captured three possible young colonies of deep-water coral growing on an infield cable, although the identification could not be confirmed because no physical samples were collected.The survey offered researchers a rare view of how marine life has settled