Successful completion of French GEOVIDE cruise in the North Atlantic Ocean

The GEOVIDE cruise (GA01) has been successfully completed on 30 June, after 47 days of sailing in the North Atlantic from Lisbon (Portugal) to St John’s (Newfoundland, Canada).

The North Atlantic is a key region for Earth climate and oceanic circulation, being a major area of the Merdional Overturning Circulation (MOC), which characteristics and variability have been studied since 2002 in the framework of the OVIDE project. Moreover, the Trace Element and Isotope (TEI) cycles are largely unknown in this zone and present very contrasted sources.

GEOVIDE is an international collaborative project that aims to better constrain (i) the uncertainties on water and heat fluxes, notably by adding new tracers and information on export and circulation of deep waters, and (ii) the biogeochemical fluxes and processes.

Forty scientists from 15 laboratories from 7 different countries successfully occupied 78 stations, with a total of 163 classical rosette casts and 53 clean rosette ones. In-situ pumps were deployed 25 times, representing more than 140 hours of pumping. In addition, a mono-corer was deployed 11 times, and 9 plankton nets traits were realized. 60 XBTs were dropped, and 17 floats were deployed. Finally, 140 clean underway surface samples were collected as well as 18 aerosol and 10 rainwater samples. 

Figure: R/V Pourquoi pas? during GEOVIDE cruise – © IFREMER

A cruise blog is available at: http://geovide.tumblr.com

Chief scientists : Géraldine Sarthou (LEMAR-IUEM, Brest, France) and Pascale Lherminier (LPO-IUEM, Brest, France).