Day 2 - Preparation goes on

The winds keeps holding us at the dock

We will not leave la Seyne-sur-Mer today. Departure is scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday 2nd of January.
The current wind, force 6 (39 to 49 km/h according to the Beaufort scale), can't cause the vessel any navigational issue. The Pourquoi pas? can sail in winds force 9 (72 to 88 km/h) - while restricting professional activities on board to guarantee the staff safety, of course. Nevertheless, today's conditions prevent any operations, namely, the launching of research infrastructures such as the Scientific Junction Box or the Nautile submarine. Due to their weight of several tons, these devices require a great stability to be handled by the crane in complete safety.
So, we are all impatiently waiting for the weather to turn in our favor!

The design of BathyReef

The artificial reef BathyReef was built by Vicat and biomimetically inspired by the Rougerie+Tangram Lab.

But what does biomimetically inspired mean? Biomimicry is the meeting point between human technology and biology: it's about designing innovations inspired by living things. This artificial reef has structures similar to the internal tissues of tunicates, a group of filter-feeding marine animals that live attached to a substrate. And why tunicates? Well, because they have both very rigid and partitioned tissues. On the one hand, the internal partitions, at the origin of the porosity of the tissues, allow the artificial reef to optimize its colonizable surface. The larger its colonizable surface is, the more life forms it can shelter. And on the other hand, the regular arrangement of the partitions makes it a solid structure; this is an unavoidable parameter for an artificial reef subjected to manipulation and pressure!