Bréhat, 1880

by Laurent Gontier

 Bréhat with the GeoGarage platform (SHOM nautical raster chart)

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Ancient vs modern nautical maps  / France 1750 - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Masterful thunderstorm

Masterful thunderstorm under the starry sky of the French Riviera.
Here is a 10-second time lapse that sums up 30 minutes of thunderstorm hunting off the coast of Cannes, on Tueday 4th, 2020.
The isolated cell under the star that regularly releases extranuages.
An explosive development and many branched out extra cloudy, all under the celestial vault, the weather offers a unique moment. 
Video credit: www.serge-zaka.com / Twitter : @sergezaka

Ambitious designs for underwater 'space station' and habitat unveiled

Credit: Courtesy Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject

From CNN  by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

Sixty feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau and industrial designer Yves Béhar are envisioning the world's largest underwater research station and habitat.
The pair have unveiled Fabien Cousteau's Proteus, a 4,000-square-foot modular lab that will sit under the water off the coast of Curaçao, providing a home to scientists and researchers from across the world studying the ocean -- from the effects of climate change and new marine life to medicinal breakthroughs.
Designed as a two-story circular structure grounded to the ocean floor on stilts, Proteus' protruding pods contain laboratories, personal quarters, medical bays and a moon pool where divers can access the ocean floor.
Powered by wind and solar energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion, the structure will also feature the first underwater greenhouse for growing food, as well as a video production facility.

Fabien Cousteau's Proteus Credit: Courtesy Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject

The Proteus is intended to be the underwater version of the International Space Station (ISS), where government agencies, scientists, and the private sector can collaborate in the spirit of collective knowledge, irrespective of borders.

"Ocean exploration is 1,000 times more important than space exploration for -- selfishly -- our survival, for our trajectory into the future," Cousteau said over a video call, with Béhar. "It's our life support system. It is the very reason why we exist in the first place."
The newly unveiled design is the latest step for this ambitious project.
According to Cousteau, it will take three years until Proteus is installed, though the coronavirus pandemic has already delayed the project.

Left undiscovered 

Though oceans cover 71 percent of the world's surface, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that humans have only explored about 5 percent and mapped less than 20 percent of the world's seas.
Space exploration receives more attention and funding than its aquatic counterpart, which Cousteau hopes to remedy with Proteus -- and eventually a worldwide network of underwater research habitats. Facilities stationed in different oceans could warn of tsunamis and hurricanes, Cousteau said.
They could also pioneer ambitious new research into sustainability, energy and robotics.

Underwater habitats allow scientists to perform continuous night and day diving without requiring hours of decompression between dives.
Like astronauts in space, they can stay underwater for days or weeks at a time.
Currently, the only underwater habitat that exists is the 400-square-foot Aquarius, in the Florida Keys, which Costeau stayed in with a team of aquanauts for 31 days in 2014.
Designed in 1986 and originally owned by the NOAA, in 2013 Florida International University saved Aquarius from being abandoned after the NOAA lost government funding.

The Aquarius underwater research habitat in the Atlantic Ocean.

Credit: Mark Conlin/VW PICS/UIG/Getty Images

Family tradition

Cousteau comes from a family of famous oceanographic explorers.
He's the son of filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau and grandson of Aqua-Lung co-creator Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
The project is a joint effort between the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center (FCOLC) and Béhar's design firm Fuseproject, as well as their partners, which include Northeastern University, Rutgers University and the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation.
Despite his emphasis on ocean research, Cousteau said he's "a big proponent of space exploration," noting they are similar in nature.
Both types of missions require humans to be in isolation in extreme, untenable conditions.
Because of that, Béhar's design, which can house up to 12 people, focuses on wellness as well as scientific and technological capabilities, including recreation areas and windows designed to let in as much light as possible.

  In the year 2000: A monster from the abyss - At the edge of an underwater liner - Pearl seekers - A game of croquet - A difficult catch - A hydroplane - See terrace! - A strange team - An underwater bus - An ocean landscape - A whalebus - Underwater yachting 

Author : Côté, Jean-Marc (18..-19..). Presumed cartoonist Publisher :  (Paris)

Publication date : 1910

"We've worked recently on a lot of small living environments. We've worked on robotic furniture for tiny apartments," Béhar said about Fuseproject.
"So I think we had a good sense of how to design for comfort in constrained environments. That said, the underwater environment is completely different."
"We wanted it to be new and different and inspiring and futuristic," he continued.
"So (we looked) at everything from science fiction to modular housing to Japanese pod (hotels)."
The design is also meant to echo ocean life, with its structure inspired by the shape of coral polyps.
Béhar and his team also studied the underwater research habitats that have come before Proteus, including the Aquarius.
All other forerunners were temporary structures built for single missions, like NASA's experimental SEALAB I, II, and III from the 1960s.
"Those habitats were purpose built, they were small and they had great limitations," Cousteau said. "So we're building off of...(a) foundation by all those amazing pioneers that came before us."

Fabien Cousteau's Proteus Credit: Courtesy Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject

Diving ahead

While the project currently has some backing from the private sector, it is currently seeking further funding.
Beyond backers, the station's wet and dry labs can be leased to government agencies, corporations and academic institutions.
Part of the plan is to offer regular visibility about what is happening on Proteus, including live streams and VR/AR content.
In this way Cousteau hopes to engage a wider audience.

"Imagine if you found something amazing -- whether it be microcosmic like a pharmaceutical, or macrocosmic like the next greatest animal -- if you could show it to classrooms and universities," he said.
"Our mission is to be able to translate complex science into something that the average person not only maybe will understand, but fall in love with."

Links :

• Forbes : Fabien Cousteau Is Raising $135 Million To Build The International Space Station Of The Deep Sea

Tiny plankton tell the ocean's story – this vast marine mission has been listening

A metre in length, each continuous plankton recorder has a small aperture at the front for seawater to pass through.

All photographs : courtesy of the Marine Biological Association

From The Guardian by Anna Turns

Since 1931 ‘citizen scientists’ on ships have enabled data collection on the tiny building blocks of the sea.
Now this research could shape how we tackle the climate crisis

On a clear day, from their small, unassuming warehouse on the south Devon coast, Lance Gregory and Dave Wilson can see right across Plymouth Sound to the Eddystone lighthouse.
Today, they’re watching a ferry from Brittany, the Armorique, pull into dock.

Behind it, the ferry is towing a one-metre-long device shaped like a torpedo.
It doesn’t look like much, but it’s part of the planet’s longest-running global marine survey.

The device is called a continuous plankton recorder (CPR), and it’s one of 53 such devices that Gregory and Wilson manoeuvre using forklifts in their warehouse, surrounded by racks of distinctive yellow boxes and clipboards covered in spreadsheets.

They dispatch these CPRs in bright yellow boxes to “ships of opportunity” – ferries, cargo or container vessels that have agreed to volunteer for the mission.
Once a ship leaves port, the crew attach the device to the stern using steel wire, then toss it overboard.

Trailing along behind the ship, it collects data for the CPR survey.
The mission is vast but the subject is minuscule: plankton, the tiny organisms that drift in the ocean.
Every marine ecosystem relies on plankton for its basic food source, and it generates half the oxygen we breathe.
Perhaps more than any other organism, it is crucial to all life on our planet.

Microscopic plankton: they provide a food source for fish, seabirds and other marine life, as well as absorbing CO2 emissions

The CPR survey is the longest-running marine science project of its kind.
It began in 1931 when the scientist Sir Alister Hardy investigated how herring were influenced by plankton in the North Sea.
This month the distance surveyed will reach an impressive 7m nautical miles, equivalent to 320 circumnavigations of the Earth.

Since that first tow from Hull to Germany 89 years ago, the equipment has hardly changed.
So far a quarter of a million samples have been analysed, representing a vast geographical spread over the course of the past century.
The immense scope has allowed scientists to see dramatic patterns in ocean health, across both time and space, building a much clearer picture of how our marine environments are changing.

It is also, says Gregory, “one of the oldest citizen science projects in the world”.
Although it is coordinated by the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, which houses the world’s largest biological library of microscopic plankton, the survey relies on the goodwill of the merchant ships who agree to take the recorders with them as they cross the world’s oceans.

"We have a navy of volunteers on the ships that tow our equipment" Dave Wilson says, CPR survey
“from the crane operators to the ship’s agents and terminal managers in ports, right through to the boatswains and captains on the ships that tow our equipment.”

He’s known as the “Milk Tray man” in British ports, because he often takes chocolates as gifts for the sailors to thank them for their help.
“Because most crews and port staff remember us, a glitch at sea or tricky courier logistics are much easier to resolve,” he says.
“We also realise that while it’s mission critical for us, for these guys in ports, it’s an add-on – and they’re under more pressure than ever right now.”

Covid-19 has posed the biggest threat to this research in 90 years – even more so than the second world war, organisers say – because the logistics of getting the CPRs to and from ports is very difficult with current travel restrictions.

But while the pandemic has scuttled much biological research, the plankton survey has been able to continue on essential shipping routes, because no special scientific knowledge is required of the crew volunteers.
CPRs are designed to be robust, failsafe and very easy to use.
And because this low-tech piece of kit is mechanically driven by a small propeller that spins while being towed, it’s low maintenance.

Crew on the ferry Armorique throw the CPR overboard – it is then towed by the ship for up to 500 miles at a time

Seawater flows in through a small aperture at the front; for every 10 nautical miles towed, it filters three cubic metres of water.
Inside, plankton are collected between two layers of silk on a “cassette” that moves constantly onto a collection spool, which sits in formaldehyde to preserve the sample.
Tried and tested for decades, the little torpedoes can be towed for up to 500 nautical miles at a time, with each 10cm of silk representing one 10-nautical mile sample.

“We’ve recorded more than 200m biological records of individual species from the samples we’ve analysed,” says David Johns, head of the CPR survey.
“This resource is freely available online to everyone, from schoolchildren all the way up to top-flight scientists, who use our data for a myriad of different reasons.”

Plankton are defined as organisms that drift in the ocean, unable to swim against the current.
Because they are so dependent on ocean patterns, studying them can teach us about the health of not just the seas, but of the planet itself.
The longer the research continues, the greater its value for predicting future trends – and confronted with a climate crisis, that predictive power has never been more valuable.

Dr Clare Ostle, one of the CPR research scientists, has analysed more than 800 different types of plankton, from plant-like phytoplankton – which photosynthesise to produce oxygen – to the animals known collectively as zooplankton, which include fish larvae and jellyfish.

“With the spring plankton bloom kicking off right now, it’s a critical time for collecting samples,” she says.
“A lot of people will be relying on this data, as their own monitoring programmes aren’t able to continue during the pandemic. So it’s a big deal for us.”

We’ve had people come to us wanting to look back in time, to study plastic pollution, for example Dr Clare Ostle, CPR scientist

The scope of the survey has evolved over time.
Since 2017, tows have included shipping routes along the north-west passage, as a result of ice melt in the Arctic.
Meanwhile, as research questions change and new technologies come into play, fresh data can be collected from old samples.
“We’ve had people come to us wanting to look back in time, to study plastic pollution, for example,” Ostle says.
The first complete plastic bag caught by the records was recorded in 1965, and studies since then show an increasing amount of plastic fishing debris getting caught up in the recording equipment.

Indeed, in collaboration with the University of Plymouth’s Prof Richard Thompson, Ostle’s studies of plankton dating back to the 50s were able to confirm the significant increase in plastics in the open ocean since the 80s.
As a result of this pioneering study in 2004, Thompson coined the phrase “microplastics”, for fragments smaller than 5mm (and which are now so ubiquitous that some plankton have been found to ingest them).

The study also provides insight into the spread of disease.
After a form of cholera was contracted by people eating contaminated fish eggs on the west coast of Canada, scientists used the plankton survey to map the spread of cholera bacteria, which they found clinging to the surface of some plankton such as fish eggs.

The most crucial thing plankton can help us understand, however, is likely to be how the climate crisis is affecting our oceans.
The shifting distribution of plankton is a measurable effect of rising sea temperatures.
By studying samples over 30 years, Ostle has found that plankton living in colder waters have significantly smaller areas where they can thrive.
Meanwhile, plankton living in warmer waters are moving towards cooler conditions in the poles.

“This has major impacts on fish stocks, seabird populations and so many other marine animals that feed on plankton,” says Ostle.
“Plankton also absorb CO2 emissions, so they are a massive natural carbon sink that we need to protect."
“It’s so important that we maintain this unusual dataset, because there are still so many discoveries to be made, and stories that haven’t yet been told.”

Wilson and Gregory, for their part, are working hard to make sure the “golden thread of volunteers in ports around the world” know they’re more appreciated than ever.

During the pandemic he has been packing goody bags, including sweets and diving or football magazines, to send off to the crews as a special thanks.

“Everyone involved knows the value of the health of our oceans, because this is their livelihood,” he says of the citizen-scientist sailors who’ve been crucial to the mission since 1931.
“They have the sea in their heart. And they really appreciate the chocolates.”

Links :

• Phys : A 'regime shift' is happening in the Arctic Ocean, scientists say
• Science Mag : Changes in phytoplankton concentration now drive increased Arctic Ocean primary production
• Standford : A ‘regime shift’ is happening in the Arctic Ocean, Stanford scientists say

Canada (CHS) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

57 nautical raster charts updated

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