The life on board also consists all the time, 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day, by night and by day, in activities of deployment at sea of different sampling devices. The conditions are sometimes difficult in the Southern Ocean but most of what has been planned is already done. At each station sampled over periods of 48 to 60 hours are thus successively deployed the sampling rosette and its many ongoing sensors (a dozen deployments per station at depths ranging from 500 to 4500 m depending on the location), different single plankton nets (WP2 of 100 μm and 200 μm mesh size, WP3 and phytoplankton net of 300 μm and 35 μm mesh sizes respectively for connoisseurs), multiple plankton sampler (100 μm mesh size), pelagic trawl and finally in situ pumps filtering several hundred liters directly at depth. During transits between stations, no respite either for the scientist in charge of the census of the top predators (birds and whales in particular). All this equipment and this observation strategy will allow us to trace the path of organic matter in food chains from bacteria to large predators.
