Macroinvertebrate Taxa Counts Associated with Experimental Seaweed Dropper Replicates, Schelphoek, The Netherlands, North East Atlantic Ocean 2018-2020 (GENIALG Project Work Package 6.1)

List of macroinvertebrate taxa associated with experimental dropper replicates. Collected at two test seaweed farms in The Netherlands. Samples collected as part of the GENIALG project (project ID: 727892, GENIALG - GENetic diversity exploitation for Innovative Macro-ALGal biorefinery, http://genialgproject.eu/). GENIALG was funded by the European Union Horizon2020 programme. The remit of the work was assessing the environmental footprint and ecosystem services provided by seaweed aquaculture in Europe to provide best practice advice to industry. A total of twelve seaweed lines (droppers of 2m length) were deployed in the farm at November 21st 2018. Six lines were located on the outer edge of the farm and six lines were located in the middle of the farm. At both locations three lines were seeded with seaweed and three lines were left empty. The ropes were collected on the 24th of April by gently removing the ropes from the water and directly transferring them into plastic bags. On May 14th 2020 droppers were randomly selected and cut from the longlines and processed following the same protocols.