The objective of the Mingulay-Rockall mission (June 2016), conducted on board the Atalante, was to retrieve water samples and sediment cores in areas rich in deposits of deep coral with a view to using these records for paleooceanographic reconstructions.
The mission focused on two sample sites in particular:
1) The Mingulay site (in the Sea of Hebrides) characterized by the presence of cold water coral reefs (L. pertusa) which currently proliferate between depths of 100 and 150 m.
2) The Logachev site (SW of the Rockall Trough) also characterized by abundant coral colonies (L. pertusa and M. oculata) but at depths of about 750 m.
The project thus aims to conduct a multidisciplinary study based on these two sites (sedimentology, biology and geochemistry of corals) in order to reconstruct the growth history of these reefs as well as environmental changes (temperature, circulation of intermediate and sub-surface waters) over the course of the Holocene. We will this thus obtain reconstructions of the hydrology of the sub-surface and intermediate waters with unprecedented temporal resolutions at two sites located at different depths.
The project brings together research teams from Britain, Ireland and France and forms part of a national research effort which aims to study deep water coral ecosystems and to use fossil corals as natural archives that can provide high resolution reconstructions of past paleoclimatic changes (ANR HAMOC PI C. Colin).