The MoMARSAT 2019 oceanographic campaign is about to start!

The MoMARSAT 2019 oceanographic campaign, jointly conducted by Ifremer and the Seismology Team of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP-CNRS/INSU), will take place from June 10 to July 4, 2019 on the mid-Atlantic ridge off the Azores.

The MIO is collaborating in this campaign: Anne Postec (MEB team) is embarking on the Pourquoi pas? and Céline Romeveaux (MEB team) is in charge of geomicrobiology experiments.

On board the oceanographic ship Pourquoi pas?, the objective of the mission is to survey the instruments deposited a year ago to continuously observe the earthquakes and hydrothermal springs of the Lucky Strike volcano at a depth of 1,700 metres. The on-board scientific team will first retrieve the data and recondition the observatory's instruments and then carry out sampling operations using the Nautile manned submersible.

The MoMARSAT campaigns are based on the EMSO-Açores Observatory, which is part of the European EMSO project. This network of sea-bottom and fixed-point water column observatories aims to observe in real time the geosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere interactions 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 of different chemical composition - the Eiffel Tower and Capelinhos - on which Anne Postec will carry out enrichment cultures for methanogens, sulfatoreductors and ferro-oxidants on board. These mats will then be studied from a genomic and protein point of view in the laboratory in order to better understand the development of ferro-oxidant bacteria within these mats.