As the Yersin left the first mission in Macaronesia to cross the Atlantic, we welcomed a team from Aix-Marseille Université onboard. This team spent the 20-day transatlantic trip making 18 station stops and covering 6000km to study what is well known as the Sargasso Sea.
The team of 8 documented their time on the Yersin and the work they performed on this site. I encourage you to take a look and read about their part of the Monaco Explorations expedition there.
Here are photos from the expedition, courtesy of Olivier Borde.
About 20 kids from The Prêcheur’s school and Marcel Ravin’s l’Esperance association visited the Yersin and discovered Monaco Explorations.
Maud Fontenoy talked about her experience and her foundation to protect seas, Sandrine Ruitton said a lot about her research on sargassum, Didier Zoccola presented sciences at sea and the boat’s labs, and captain Jean Dumarais offered a tour into the Yersin. Great day !
Read Monaco Exploration and the Yersin are in Fort de France (FranceAntilles.fr).
Round-the-world Expedition to Study Marine Megafauna (CNRS).
During his trip to Cabo Verde with Monaco Explorations, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco came to Mindelo to the new Ocean Science Centre of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research (Germany).
HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco and Jorge Carlos Fonseca, President of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The Prince gave back a giant skink specimen to Cabo Verde.
This lizard was living in Branco Island (Cabo Verde, Atlantic Ocean) but has disappeared due to human activities and habitat destruction. This lizard was collected by Prince Albert the first in 1901.
Photo © Monaco Explorations / Olivier Borde
After leaving Branco, we traveled to the neighbor island of Santa Luzia where the GEOMAR team placed the bottom lander in its next location just off the coast at about 20m depths. It was a very windy morning and we were lucky to have professional divers with us to help determine a good location in such a rough sea. It was quite a chore also for the Yersin crew to get the bottom lander off the deck and into the water, as the wind sways the arm of the crane and threatens damage to the vessel.
After placing the bottom lander, the Yersin traveled back to Mindelo to welcome HSH Prince Albert II on the mission. These dolphins escorted us for a long period of that trip. Here is an unedited video taken with an iPhone where you can really get a feel for the dolphins that were traveling on both sides of the Yersin, and hear the wind and the sea. Enjoy!
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Pictures: Plastic and wastes on Selvagem island.
Let’s have a look to the galleries … today Macaronesia, underwater.
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