As they do every year at this time, the first-year students in the Marine Sciences Masters programme went out to sea as part of their course, on a vessel in the French oceanographic fleet (operated by IFREMER), from 18 to 25 February (including the weekend!), alternating between taking samples at sea and doing practical work on land, in the university laboratories, to extract, filter and analyse the samples collected. The missions will depart from the IFREMER base at La Seyne-sur-Mer.
This year, the boat used was the Téthys II, a 25m-long oceanographic vessel that can accommodate 8 scientists and students on board (during the COVID period, and 12 people during the 'normal' period). The missions mainly took place in the Toulon harbour and off Cap Sicié. Climbing aboard this type of oceanographic vessel is a powerful experience for the students, especially as obtaining sea time on these boats is far from easy: they are so widely used by the oceanographic community that booking applications have to be made a year in advance, with no guarantee of dates! The teaching team therefore prepares for this mission from one year to the next, which takes a long time, but is systematically rewarded by the high level of involvement of the students in this unique period of their course.
This year, the Mistral blew almost every day during the mission, but that didn't discourage the team! Only one day was cancelled for safety reasons, as the whole of the Var region was under yellow alert for strong winds.
Key figures for this mission:
31 Master 1 Marine Sciences students and 7 Physics and Chemistry undergraduates boarded the boat.
22 vertical profiles of the water column measured
16 surface water withdrawals
140 litres of filtered seawater
5 plankton net deployments
7 drifting float trajectories deployed daily.
Over the course of 8 intense days, the master's students work on various analysis tasks, sharing the work between the different courses and thus promoting the multidisciplinary physics-chemistry-biology approach that is one of the aims of this course. The students finish this period with an oral presentation of their work in sub-groups, in front of the teaching team, which consists mainly of B. Zakardjian, V. Sanial, Y. Ourmieres, V. Lenoble, J.-F. Briand and J.-L. Jamet, all teacher-researchers at MIO and MAPIEM, as well as C. Dignan and F. Drouet, both doctoral students at MIO.