The MoMARSAT 2019 oceanographic campaign, run jointly by Ifremer and the Seismology Team of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP-CNRS/INSU), will take place from 10 June to 4 July 2019 on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, off the Azores.
The MIO is collaborating on this campaign: Anne Postec (SEM team) is on board the Pourquoi pas? and Céline Romeveaux (SEM team) is in charge of the geomicrobiology experiments.
The aim of the mission aboard the oceanographic vessel Pourquoi pas? is to raise the instruments installed a year ago to continuously observe the earthquakes and hydrothermal springs of the Lucky Strike volcano, located at a depth of 1,700 metres. The onboard scientific team will first recover the data and recondition the observatory instruments, then carry out sampling operations using the manned submersible Nautile.
MoMARSAT campaigns are based around the EMSO-Açores observatory, which is part of the European EMSO project. The scientific aim of this network of fixed-point seabed and water column observatories is to observe in real time the interactions between the geosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere within different marine ecosystems. EMSO aims to acquire long time series (10 to 20 years) in the seas around Europe.
For the MIO: microbial mats rich in iron oxides will be sampled at two sites with different chemical compositions - Tour Eiffel and Capelinhos - where Anne Postec will carry out on-board enrichment cultures for methanogens, sulphate-reducers and ferro-oxidants. These mats will then be studied from a genomic and protein point of view in the laboratory in order to gain a better understanding of the development of ferro-oxidising bacteria within these mats.