Today's seminars were presented by Antonio (Ifremer) and Roza (CRAAG)

Bringing rocks from the seafloor is amazing, but there are some risks. This night the rock dredge has been stuck for more than 3 hours on the seafloor. Patience and endurance paid off, beautiful samples have been brought on board.

Slava (MSU) talked about the permafrost extension

Mapping the seafloor with echosounders such as multibeam and sub-bottom profiling is necessary to understand deep-sea environments.

Our echosounder revealed a special image on Earth Day!

We arrived in a quite complicated zone for the Pogo. We had to have a close look at the sub bottom profiles acquired live to explore the first sediment layers below the seafloor over a thickness that reaches tens of meters and find the softer sediments zone for a good penetration of the Pogo. Our multi-beam echosonder showed in the morphology of the sea floor a 90m deep crater shape morphology. 

We are closer to the Baleares slope now, and coarser sediments have been found in the cores. 

Our free time is dedicated to the gourmet restaurant of Atalante (it is not a Joke, the cook is very good), and to a tennis competition organized by Michela and starting today.

This afternoon we could attend a very nice seminar, driven by Katia and Olesia, about gas hydrates in the Baikal sediments.

The crew is always curious to learn about science.

One of the topics we are working on is the relation between salt deformation and thermal anomalies. An important reference paper from a participant of the cruise.

Link: http://pg.lyellcollection.org/content/22/4/297

The sediment cores are carefully prepared for multiple analyses:

• Physical description: colour, odour,  viscosity, density
• Magnetic susceptibility:  used as a proxy signature for the lithological composition characterisation of the sediments
• Fluid extraction: for dissolved substances analysis
• Gas extraction: for volatile substances analysis
• Thermal conductivity: necessary to understand the heat transfer 

A turtle on its way to the #WorldTurtleDay annual meeting passed by our cruise.

Example of studying fluid circulations in the deep sediments using heat-flow measurements. Three of the (co)authors are on the cruise.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X17306714

Girl power on board = positive energy!

One of the geodynamic scenarios of the Minorca Block movement that will be investigated. Four of the (co)authors are on the cruise.

Link: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01412991

Start of a long journey to the deepest areas of the Western Mediterranean!

Two moods of the sea

The main objective of the WestMedFlux cruise is to study the heat flow of the deep-sea floor in the Western Mediterranean Sea and analyse the sedimentation processes occuring at depth.

An immersion suit, or survival suit (or more specifically an immersion survival suit) is a special type of waterproof dry suit that protects the wearer from hypothermia from immersion in cold water, after abandoning a sinking or capsized vessel, especially in the open ocean. They usually have built-on feet (boots), and a hood, and either built-on gloves or watertight wrist seals.

The WestMedFlux team is composed of 21 scientists on board the research vessel (R/V) Atalante, coming from Sorbonne Faculté de Sciences, Institut Physique du Globe (IPGP), Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer (IUEM), Ifremer, Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Universidad de Cádiz (UCA), Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM), Centre de Recherche en Astronomie Astrophysique et Géophysique (CRAAG) and Lomosonov Moscow State University (MSU).