High Resolution Coastal Monitoring of the impact of diurnal migration of plankton on microbial communities in the coastal zone of the NW Mediterranean

The Daily Vertical Migration (DVM) of plankton is a global process, corresponding to the greatest known transhumance of organisms living on earth. This daily movement of a fraction of the plankton community influences carbon fluxes and the characteristics of the water masses through which they go. Although relatively well known, this process is rarely taken into account in studies of the oceanic ecosystem because of logistical constraints (need for day / night sampling of plankton in strata together with high-frequency environmental measurements). HIRCOM aims to calibrate the observations / signals (environment, acoustics, imagery) made by an innovative autonomous profiler (AQUALOG) thanks to a real time sampling (environment, imagery, genomics) of the DVM at Sea in order to test the possibility to extend these observations in time and frequency