At the end of October, 2026, the second monitoring campaign of the year will take place. Divers will leave from the Belgica and retrieve the monitoring cages stacked with oyster substrates. That day, both the 2025 cages (now 1 year and 2 months in the water) and the 2026 cages (5 months in the water) will be collected.

Pulling both up together gives a useful comparison point between a younger and a more established reef, and feeds into the BELREEFS programme's core question: understanding the feasibility of large-scale oyster habitat restoration in the Belgian part of the North Sea.

Data will be collected across five main categories: environmental conditions, oyster population metrics, restoration substrate stability, restoration substrate biodiversity, and impact on the gravel bed habitat 🦪