You can then you swim make regattas or fishing safely

The oceans were never as well observed. Around the world, 3.300 drifters, a unit cost of 12,000 euros, dive regularly up to 2,000 meters to record the temperature and salinity of the water. Once ski lifts on the surface, they send this information to ground stations, via five satellites that make up the Argos system. From space, the French-American satellite Jason 2, equipped with a radar altimeter, measuring the instant height from the sea to one centimetre, but also the shape waves and the wind speed. It covers the land in ten days. Envisat, a European satellite, studied the color and the temperature of the water. At the bottom of the oceans, sensors record temperatures, oxygen, salinity, but also noise and seismic activities.

Along the French coasts, Cetmef (Centre for maritime and river technical studies, attached to the Ministry of sustainable development) has a network of buoys calculating the height of the swell, while the SHOM (service hydrographique et océanographique Navy) maintains 30 digital coastal tide, to measure the heights of water. And, in the framework laboratories Rephy (phytoplankton monitoring network and of toxins), eleven analyze samples taken regularly on 60 points, to detect the presence of dangerous toxins for consumers of shellfish. Finally, some 30 French fishing vessels regularly send information on the waters in which they dive their trawls or traps, equipped with sensors measuring temperature and salinity...

The France in advanced

What are all these measures They participate in the operational oceanography, a discipline in which - the public ignores it - the France tip, thanks, among others, teams of Mercator-Ocean, Toulouse (read below). "The goal is to provide the ocean of operationally, as the weather described long atmo-sphere", summarizes Pierre Bahurel, Director of Mercator-Ocean. Operational oceanography, born in the second half of the 1990s, now entering its adult stage: after essentially military and scientific benefits, she begins to have civilian applications. In the military, the submariners, for example need accurate maps of the funds of the seas, but disturbances (currents around the building, height of the waves on the surface...). "Even today, make transit a submarine in security in the Red Sea, it is not clear," recalled, last February, Gilles Bessero, Director General of the SHOM, then one-day naval science, organized in Brest by the naval school, on the theme "monitoring of the marine environment".

Satellites, by measuring the height of the seas, to assess the underwater terrain. The water surface is not flat: it is widening over the abyssal pits and bomb vertical of mid-ocean. But variations of water may also report the presence of large masses of cold or hot water, which will circulate currents...

Commercial applications

The scientists use this information to measure the rise in sea level due to global warming and the role of oceans in these changes. "80 of anthropogenic additional heat, which is linked to carbon emissions, are stored in the oceans," said Anny Cazenave, Director of research at CNES (Centre national d'Etudes spatiales) and researcher at the Legos (studies in Spatial Geophysics and Oceanography laboratory), to the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse.

Today, operational oceanography interested civilians: the network of sensors (satellites, buoys ) is sufficiently dense, and mathematical models for prediction of behavior of the oceans are reliable enough for commercial applications (see below). They concern as well the routing of the ships offshore prospecting or monitoring of rivers and lakes. Alone, the control of the water quality is an extremely carrier market. "The framework directive on water, adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2000, provides that good status of surface water is restored in 2015", said Chantal Compère, responsible for Service Interfaces & sensors at Ifremer (French Institute of research for the exploitation of the sea). Responsibility will be in the States and their local communities. Who will need predictive tools...

Services to invent

Some of these applications are already in test, others are still at the stage of R & D. For this step, the operational oceanography must improve its accuracy, even more interest in the coastal area and evaluate, physical data (temperatures, heights...), but the biological elements, such as the presence of algae (see below) or mammals also. With, in the background, the onset of an economic model. "Operational oceanography must pass a mode"demo"mode that"service"of general interest: acquired maturity permits, users request", explains Pierre Bahurel. In other words, it is now to propose innovative SMEs database information to provide services with high added value.

"However, where economic issues are most important, it is near the coast", said Jacques Legrand, responsible for operational coastal oceanography at Ifremer program. Mercator-Ocean thus has a little brother, Prévimer, which has the same objectives (forecast heights of the tides, temperatures, salinity, currents and eddies...), which adds the prediction of the quality bacteriological, but centered on the coastal strip. Launched by Ifremer, SHOM and weather France, should be operational in 2013. You can then you swim, make regattas or fishing safely...