Brest (AFP)
Some antibiotics, food additives or pesticides have been detected for the first time at sea, after being transported sometimes over long distances, according to the work of researchers gathered around the European program Jerico-Next, coordinated by Ifremer.
"This is the first time we show that human activity is found in coastal waters, but also further offshore," said Laurent Delauney, one of the program's coordinators, at the end of the week. the final meeting of the project Friday in Brest.
Some antibiotics, herbicides, hydrocarbons or food additives, such as sweetener, from sugar-reduced beverages in particular, have been found in the Baltic Sea and the Norwegian Sea, but also in the North Sea, according to a study carried out under the Jerico-Next project by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (Niva).
"You can find this type of product in estuaries, mouths of rivers or rivers, but also far from the coast is pretty new," said Ingrid Puillat, scientific coordinator of the project, also highlighting the interest of having from now on a cartography on a European scale of the presence at sea of these products.
This discovery was made possible by the implementation of measurement tools much more precise than those existing until now to monitor coastal waters, an object even from the Jerico-Next program.
"Basically, it was a question of developing a harmonized and efficient coastal water observation system, but to apply it scientific cases have been studied", explained Mr. Delauney, engineer at the French Institute of research for the exploitation of the sea (Ifremer).
Thus, new sensors were developed and placed on observation buoys or ships and including ferries, which allowed to have measurements on the same trip, several times a week or even a day.
Brittany ferries' ships were equipped with these sensors, the size of an electrical cabinet. Installed inside the ship, they collected seawater, which was then analyzed using different methods.
Started in 2011 and bringing together some 30 partners from 15 European countries, the Jerico program series also focused on the carbon cycle in coastal waters or the proliferation of microalgae or phytoplankton.
The program should continue with a third component, in particular to develop a single European-wide Internet portal, where the coastal data produced by all the partners of the observation network would be made available.
? 2019 AFP