19 February 2018, the RV Marion Dufresne slowly escaped from the dock of Le Port, under a tropical storm that La Réunion island offers at this time of the year. After sailing along the west coast, the research vessel is heading South. The past days were devoted to organizing the laboratories on board the ship and to testing at sea the set of samplers (rosette fitted with 22 hydrological bottles and a bottle net, different phyto– and zooplankton nets, multi–net sampler, pelagic trawl, various sensors –fluorometer, transmissometer, Ecotriplet, underwater video profiler, Laser In Situ Scatterometer/Transmissometer, Laser Optical Plankton Counter). The many instruments of the orchestra are now tuned and it only remains to have them play all together. First concert during the night of Sunday to Monday at station M2 located south of Kerguelen, over a shallow (… still 500 m depth) submarine plateau. The 120 m long RV Marion Dufresne is now sailing between the roaring 40th’s and the furious 50th’s, which for the moment reveal relatively calm. Albatrosses and petrels started to follow the ship yesterday, announcing the rapidly approaching the Southern Ocean…
