Off Brittany, 300 km from the tip of Penmarc'h, hides the submarine canyon of Lampaul (Finistère).

A natural site that contains cold water corals, jewels of the ocean still unknown in France.

“Cold water corals are much less well known because less accessible to the general public, they are also less colorful,” explains Lénaïck Menot.

“Their functional role is however quite similar to that of tropical corals.

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The researcher who is a member of the Deep Environment laboratory at Ifremer worked on setting up an observatory within the canyon itself.

Open since August 4, its mission is to protect these corals, which are the source of particularly rich and complex ecosystems, and are home to a wide variety of flora and fauna.

According to WWF, these coral reefs are home to 25% of our planet's marine life.

The #ChEReef campaign is starting today from Brest!

🍾 For 1 month she will roam our coasts with one goal: to get to know the #cold water corals better ❄️ to better protect them 💪


Go and meet these splendid animals .. 👀 @ LifeMarha @ LNatura2000 pic.twitter.com/ x9svdwiSxZ

- Ifremer (@Ifremer_fr) August 4, 2021

But these cold-water corals also suffer from human activities such as fishing and plastic pollution in the oceans.

“In recent years, we have observed a lot of waste in deep places,” notes Franck Lartaud, from the Banyuls Oceanological Observatory and member of the mission.

“Microplastics are the most problematic, corals try to ingest them and then eventually spit them out.

They are completely exhausted at that, ”he emphasizes.

An observatory at a depth of 900 m

In an attempt to better understand the phenomenon, Ifremer has installed Operation Chereef on the Thalassa ship. This mission is part of a European project aimed at improving the state of conservation of marine habitats. Its purpose is to map the Lampaul canyon at very high resolution, to carry out samples and experiments there, and to install an observatory. Installed at a depth of 900 meters, the latter will film a coral reef for fifteen minutes every day for five years. It will be equipped with various measuring instruments, as well as a camera capable of getting as close as possible to the corals thanks to a 30-meter-long cable.

In 2022, the Océanopolis marine park in Brest hopes to be able to acquire a hyperbaric chamber capable of presenting cold water corals to the general public, which would be a first in France.

According to Ifremer, the Bay of Biscay and its many submarine canyons offer conditions conducive to the development of cold-water corals.

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