Expansion of small-scale changes in macrobenthic community inside an offshore wind farm?

The presence of offshore wind farms in the marine environment has some impacts on the macrobenthic community living in the natural sandy sediments. Changes in hydrodynamics, presence of epifaunal coverage along the turbine and fisheries exclusion are expected to be the main causes influencing the macrobenthos. In this study it was investigated whether changes in sediment characteristics and the macrobenthic community occurred inside a wind farm in the Belgian part of the North Sea. Both stations in the close vicinity of the turbines (50 m distance, close samples) and further away (350-500 m distance, far samples) were sampled with a Van Veen grab in autumn 2015