Our very own chief scientist Daniele Brunelli is diving within the Nautile as we speak. They have reached the depth of 6032.6 at about 11.10 this morning! A new record for the Nautile! Daniele is exploring the deepest portion of a core complex, a huge structure composed of mantle rocks…
At 10:15 on July 22nd, I enter the Nautile. The submarine is moved to the back of the boat, the door closes and the crew puts us in the water. The divers release the security wire, that is it, we are diving. During the descent, the pilot and co-pilot explain…
On the 21st of July, we had the first Nautile dive of the expedition. Everything went quite smoothly from start to end. The most amazing thing about this dive was the starting depth at 6010m. We are talking about 6 km of water sitting on top of this little yellow…
We left few days ago and, that is it, work has begun! We arrived on the study area on July 18th. Shifts were assigned in groups of 2 to regularly record information about the vessel’s position, the depth measured by the magnetometer and any manipulations in progress. Fabio works with…
The main aim of this cruise is to dive to the bottom of the ocean at the Romanche transform intersection with the Mid Atlantic Ridge to make observations of the tectonic structures and collect rocks. We do this with the Nautile, the manned submersible owned by Ifremer, the French Research…
The day to embark on the ship has finally arrived and on the 12th of July the agent picked up the members of the scientific team and headed to Porto Grande, where the Pourquoipas? was docked. The ship is super-impressive, very big (much bigger than in the picture), 7 floors…
We arrived in Mindelo in the island of Sao Vicente, one of the 10 volcanic islands that form the archipelago of Cape Verde in the Central Atlantic and the hometown of Cesaria Evora for the morna enthusiasts. We will embark on the Pourquoi pas? tomorrow morning and sail on the…
The SMARTIES project (aka Smooth regions at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Transform-Intersections under Extreme thermal gradientS) is sailing off today! We are leaving this afternoon to fly to the island of Mindelo where we will embark on the French research vessel “Pourquoi pas?” (indeed: why not!). We will be at sea…