Kick-off for Baltic Blue Growth mussel farming project

Can mussel farming improve the Baltic Sea's water quality and at the same time create new business models for animal feed production? The project Baltic Blue Growth will try to answer this question by advancing mussel farming in the Baltic Sea from experimental to full scale. It has now officially started with a kick-off meeting in Linköping, Sweden on 21-22 June 2016.

Six mussel farms in different parts of the Baltic Sea form the basis for this project. Besides considering the opportunities for counteracting eutrophication, the project will also process mussels into fish and poultry feed.

"In previous projects, different cultivation methods and technologies have been tested on a small scale. Baltic Blue Growth will build on these results, and set up several large-scale cultivations. They will be located in the archipelago of Östergötland, the Kalmar Strait, the Kiel Bight, Southern Jutland, the Gulf of Riga and next to the Vormsi island in Estonia. The project will also develop a process and test facilities to produce mussel meal," says Lena Tasse, project manager for Baltic Blue Growth with the Lead Partner organisation Region Östergötland.

The SUBMARINER Network and several of its members are involved in the project as partners. The SUBMARINER Network will be respoinsible for the project's external communication activities. This involves the creation and maintenance of a dedicated project website as a sub-section of the network's web portal. The SUBMARINER Network will also lead a study on potential compensation mechanisms for the ecosystem services that mussels provide by filtering the water.

photo: Mats Helander, Region Östergötland