Our colleagues Stéphanie Barrillon and Jean-Luc Fuda (CNRS-MIO) were invited to take part in the campaign SOLMINEUR which took place on board the N/0 Why Not from 15 at 25 July 2026 off the coast of Belle-Île-en-Mer.
This campaign, led by SHOM, was designed to track and document the powerful underwater solitons that propagate across the Breton shelf, associated with particularly intense vertical currents.
The VVP (Vertical Velocity Profiler), developed by the MIO’s OPLC team, recorded record vertical velocities of up to 8 cm/s, complementing the data from the array of instruments deployed for this exceptional campaign (MVP, gliders, specialised sounders, front-detection cameras, satellite imagery, etc.).
Over the past two years, the VVP has evolved into a «multi-layer» version, which allows sampling of several immersion layers and specified thicknesses during a single six-hour session, in order to target specific interfaces of interest (e.g. the thermocline) at high temporal resolution.
A bottom detection device («Bottom Contact») has also been developed specifically for SOLMINEUR.
This latest feature makes it possible to carry out sampling very close to the seabed (10–20 cm), which opens up new possibilities for the VVP, beyond its primary function of measuring vertical currents.
