Effect of mussel bio-pumping on the drag on and flow around a mussel crop rope

Drag measurements are conducted to determine if inhalant and exhalant of fluid during mussel feeding has a detectable influence on the drag of a mussel-encrusted rope such as is commonly used in suspended aquaculture. The experiment is conducted using an artificial mussel crop rope constructed using the shells of Perna canaliculus, with 100 mussels (mean shell length 83.4 mm, S.D. 8.7 mm) attached over a length of 0.90 m. Fluid pumping from mussel feeding is simulated using inhalant and exhalant jets pumping at a rate of 7 L h−1 per mussel. The mussel rope is towed at speeds between 0.05 and 0.4 m s−1. No significant difference is found between drag with and without the mussels pumping indicating that assessments of the drag on or from mussel long-lines may safely neglect the effect of mussel feeding. We suggest using twice the mussel shell size to define mussel rope diameter which gives a drag coefficient of CD ∼1.0. A value of CD ∼1.3 is obtained if the projected area of the mussel rope is used. Particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) is also used on a similar but shorter crop rope (0.3 m length) in a recirculating flume which reveals that mussel pumping induces only small changes to mean velocity and turbulence distributions downstream of the rope. The wake of the crop rope is highly turbulent and dominated by shear instabilities formed in the free shear layer, similar to bluff body wakes. The sharp edges of the mussel shells provide many points for flow separation to occur. At typical ambient velocities, turbulent kinetic energy produced by the exhalant jets is small in comparison to that from flow around the crop rope.