System for Acquiring, Validating and Exploiting Data from INSU Vessels North-Western Mediterranean and Channel/Atlantic French coasts 1996 -

G maps represent the nature of the sea floor in the background of a maritime map used in navigation. Most such maps are published at a scale of nearly 1/50 000, and are as often as possible drawn up within the context of collaborations with university laboratories with knowledge of the area to be mapped.

Zones corresponding to the delimitation of major watersheds and related marine areas in the Seine-Normandy basin for the assessment of pressures on the different water masses on the Normandy coast and marine sub region English Channel - North Sea. Nutrient discharges from industries and communities.

Coastline monitoring : Aquitaine coast (sandy coast since 1996, rocky coast since 2000), Corsican coast (since 2000 or 2002 depending on the site), the Pays de Monts coast (since 2010), the PACA region cliffs (work in progress). This project includes a number of coastal monitoring measures implemented on a local scale by the BRGM (the French Geological Survey) within the framework of the Aquitaine Coastal Observatory, the Corsican Coastal Observation Network and the Pays de Mons Coastal Observatory.

To produce marine bird indicators of the ecological state of the French coasts (functioning, Marine protected Areas, etc.) To structure monitoring works carried out on the French coasts as a network To extend the sectors involved to all coasts, beyond the borders of the Interreg Atlantic Arc (project for 2013) To study the distribution of marine birds along French coasts To identify functional sites To identify areas of high concentration and, in other cases, marine Important Bird Areas To list the currents Marine Protected Areas (N2000 en mer, Marine parks, Nature reserves)

The ECORS project – marine section – contributes to improving the representation of the marine environment and its evolution, within the context of aquatic operations : waves, currents, beach terrain.

The Ferry Box onboard Brittany Ferries’ Pont Aven vessel, which was installed in collaboration with Roscoff Marine Station, was financed by the Previmer project (CPER Bretagne funding). Within the context of this project, the data acquired by the device is used in the Previmer oceanographic models. The data can be accessed with the Coriolis oceanographic data server. Six surface parameters (temperature, salinity, oxygen content, chlorophyll fluorescence, turbidity and CDOM) are regularly measured during transects through a given area. In addition to these observations, plankton (both phyto and zooplankton are counted in the same way as for the Marine Station FerryBox installed onboard the Armorique ferry.

Intertidal mudflats are a key system of the network, being closely connected to ecosystems which form the transition between the watershed area and the ocean. Their high productivity is linked to activity within a diatom biofilm, the functioning and future of which have recently been the subject of many research programmes. However, the determinism and future of bacterial production associated with the secretion of ExoPolySaccharides within the biofilm is largely unknown. Early studies have nevertheless shown that this production is at least as high as that of diatoms. An integrated view of the ecological functioning of intertidal mudflats within a more global schema of carbon flow therefore needs to define and quantify the determinism of this bacterial production and it future within the ecosystem.