To support its strategy and develop new fields of research, Ifremer sets up a new scheme, the «Blue Chairs», for a maximum duration of 5 years.

Similar to a space station, in 2010 the EMSO Açores scientific observatory was deployed 1700 m onto underwater mountain ranges and volcanos in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The oceanographic vessel Pourquoi Pas ? (Why not?) has been stationed since 13th September to conduct the annual maintenance of this battery of technologies (Momarsat campaign, coordinated by Ifremer and the CNRS).

1 September 2020. The final call for the EU-funded MaRINET2 project opens today, targeted at offshore energy technology developers who are looking to test their device or components.

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.

The Channel area will be the focus of a three-year project to remove and prevent plastic pollution at hotspots in the UK and France.