



Following the detection of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater in Paris and the Great East area, Ifremer is now looking into the possible contamination of wastewater by the virus by carrying out a series of samples at three treatment plants in the Great West area. While the study of these samples confirms the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in 9 out of 13 wastewater samples, new analyzes also confirm the absence of any trace of the virus in shellfish.
Following the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in wastewater in France and other countries, Ifremer carried out analyses to confirm that the virus was not present in the seawater or shellfish along the French coastline. Results of the first molecular analyses carried out by the Nantes ‘Health, environment and microbiology’ (LSEM) laboratory, at Ifremer’s Atlantic center, were negative and no traces of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus were detected in the samples of seawater and mollusks analyzed.

Frédérique Le Roux, an IFREMER researcher in molecular microbiology at the Roscoff marine station (CNRS/Sorbonne Université), has won a €2.5 million Advanced Grant from the ERC (European Research Council) for DYNAMIC, a project that studies phages in marine environments. Phages, which are natural predators of bacteria, could be an alternative to antibiotics.

Heading for the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties! Until 1 March 2020, the ACCLIMATE 2 campaign will take French and foreign scientists on board the Marion Dufresne from Durban in South Africa.
The objective: to better understand the climate history of the Southern Ocean with a series of sediment cores.



