2009 Final report of Monitoring and Observatories
Chairs - Javier Escartin (France) & Ana Colaço (Portugal)
The Monitoring and Observatories (MoMAR) WG completed its work in 2009; the main goal of the WG has been achieved, as there is an international and multidisciplinary a program in Europe, ESONET (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory, http://www.esonet-emso.org/), that includes the development and installation of a seafloor observatory at the Lucky Strike field in the MoMAR area. The first step of this effort is the the ESONET MoMAR-D demonstration mission in 2010 (http://www.esonet-noe.org/main_activities/demonstration_missions/momar), which will provide an autonomous seafloor observatory with direct communication to and from land, for 2010-2011. A workshop specific to ESONET MoMAR was held in Oct. 2009, followed by an ESONET best practices workshop on “Instrumentation - Infrastructure – Interoperability.”
Recent MoMAR field activities include the Bathyluck Cruise onboard N/O Pourquoi Pas? (PIs: J. Escartin, M. Cannat), that carried out extensive near-bottom geophysical surveying of the Lucky Strike segment and vent field using ROV Victor and AUV AsterX (IFREMER), sampling (basalt, hydrothermal deposits, fluids, biological and microbiological samples) and installation of instrumentation (temperature sensors, pressuge gauges, currentmeters, seismometers) to be recovered and redeployed in 2010 during the installation of the seafloor observatory. A GIS database of the MoMAR area is under development. An online (www.momar.org) version and a more complete version (upon request, contact: J. Escartin) of the GIS database is available for cruise planning purposes.
Although this WG is now disbanded after achieving its main goals, IR will maintain an active role to help foster collaborations among the various international seafloor observatory programs, an important development for IR’s third decade plan.
