The second dive, carried out on July 22nd was launched at 10:40 am. This dive being shallower than the first one, 2950 meters, the descent was shorter, arriving at the bottom around 12:20 pm. The profile of this dive is located on the northern part of the transform fault and therefore crosses a 50 Ma… Read More
The first few days of the SMARTIES mission have been devoted to the deployment of 19 Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBSs) in the western Romanche Transform Fault and its intersection with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR). These will stay on the seabed for ~30 days passively recording the microseismicity of this dynamic area and will be collected… Read More
On July 21st we are at the position of the first dive of the cruise. The Nautile, refit at the beginning of the year, must be qualified for great depths. We thus chose the first dive on a target allowing to start it at 6000 m depth. Then, the chosen profile chosen will go up… Read More
During the cruise, we are going to dive with the Nautile. It is a submersible that can dive until 6000 meter deep so we can collect rocks samples and record high quality photographs and videos of the ocean floor. Despite its length, the pilot’s cabin is a bit small. It is a sphere that can… Read More
The Nautile is the inhabited deep-sea submarine operated by Ifremer. Able to reachdepths of 6000m, he made his first dive in 1984 and his first scientific mission the following year in the subduction zone off Japan during the KAIKO cruise, where he dived to 6000m. Since then, he has dived in different places, allowing scientists… Read More
23:27 on Wednesday, July 17 2019 : it’s time for the first OBS deployment ! During the SMARTIES cruise, 19 OBS (Ocean Bottom Seismometers) will be deployed. It is one of the first things to do when we arrive at the study zone. Indeed, once it reaches the seafloor, the OBS will record every felt… Read More
The “Pourquoi Pas? » is the newest offshore vessel of the French Oceanographic Fleet. With a length of 107 meters, it can accommodate up to 40 scientists and is a platform of choice for the deployment of heavy equipment such as the Nautile. The crew, made up of sailors, technicians and engineers from GENAVIR, is specialized… Read More
The scientific team on board is made up of researchers from different specialties and several research institutes. The two scientific co-chiefs of the cruise are Marcia Maia, geophysicist (CNRS-University of Brest, France) and Daniele Brunelli, petrologist (University of Modena, Italy). The disciplinary field represented on board is vast: numerical modeling, geophysics, structural geology, tectonics, petrology,… Read More
July 13 at 8 AM the “Pourquoi Pas? leaves the wharf at Mindelo. This is the beginning of the SMARTIES adventure and there is a lot of excitement among the members of the scientific team. We anticipate the beautiful data that we will harvest in the work area. Which is still very far! We will… Read More
On the morning of the 12th, the agent of the ship picked us up at our hotels to take us on board. We arrived around 9 AM and got our cabins. Then we had to unload our equipment, stored in our container which was loaded on the ship in Brest at the end of May.… Read More