On the 21st of January 2022 PLOCAN observatory’s team recovered the EGIM, deployed in 500m depth last October in waters off the volcanic eruption of La Palma island, with the support of Research Vessel IEO Angeles Alvariño.
PLOCAN is a member of
EMSO ERIC (European Multidiciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory) and in charge of operating the EMSO Canary Islands Regional Facility. the EGIM (EMSO Generic Instrumentation Module) has been developed to serve EMSO ambitions for interoperability, flexibility and capability for future evolution, standardization to measure Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs). It complies with EMSO best practices for reliability, data quality, thus meets the fundamentals of the future EMSO Label frame of technical and scientific requirements.
Using different fixed and mobile observation platforms and in collaboration with several institutes (ULPGC, UPC, EMSO ERIC, IFREMER, CNRS among others), the scientific objective of the oceanographic mission coordinated by PLOCAN around the La Palma eruption is to study the disturbance that the intrusion of the volcanic flow is having in the marine environment, both in the immediate coastal ecosystems and in the oceanic zone. In particular, the effect that noise and the variation of chemical parameters is producing on the species present in the environment, as well as the effects on the variation of oceanographic and biogeochemical dynamics will be studied.
Metocean variables of interest that are envisaged to be measured via different means and according to current capacities, among others: Oceanic: Salinity, Temperature, Dissolved Oxygen, Sound, Current, pH, pCO2; Atmospheric: Wind direction and intensity, pressure, Relative Humidity, Air temperatura.
