Navigator Fabrice Amedeo will start the Vendée Globe on November 10, aboard the Nexans – Wewise sailboat, equipped with two oceanographic sensors. The latter, which have just been installed on board, will make it possible to collect new data in the Deep South for the scientific community. This equipment, which disappeared during the shipwreck on the Route du Rhum, was recently replaced thanks to the support of its partners.
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While the Imoca Nexans-Wewise, recently returned to the water for its first training voyages, is equipped with two oceanographic sensors. The first, called “Ocean Pack”, measures the CO2, salinity and temperature of the oceans traveled by Fabrice Amedeo. All of the data collected is transmitted after each measurement campaign to Ifremer in Brest as well as to Geomar and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. They are also integrated into the Socat database, in order to be made available to the entire international scientific community. These data are valuable for understanding the consequences of global warming on the oceans. They have the advantage of being collected from sailboats, therefore free from any thermal pollution unlike motorized scientific vessels. In addition, these measurements are carried out on routes that scientific boats rarely visit.
This study also revealed other forms of pollution!
The second sensor is dedicated to the detection of microplastics. Equipped with 300, 150 and 30 micron filters, capable of trapping different sizes of particles in the ocean. This technology offers scientists a unique opportunity to analyze in detail the presence of microplastics in the vast expanses of sea crossed by the Nexans – Wewise sailboat. This study also revealed other forms of pollution, in particular textile fibers coming from wastewater released en masse by our washing machines into waterways, then into the oceans.
Fabrice Amedeo has already carried out measurement campaigns in the Atlantic
Between 2020 and 2024, Fabrice Amedeo carried out multiple measurement campaigns in the Atlantic, thus creating a complete grid of this ocean. His participations in the Transat Jacques Vabre, the Vendée Globe (with a descent to the 45th parallel South), the Vendée Arctic (up to the 64th parallel North) and the “return” transatlantics between the West Indian arc and France have contributed greatly to this work. For the next Vendée Globe, scheduled for the following winter, the objective is ambitious: to carry out an unprecedented measurement campaign in the South Seas in order to identify and characterize all pollution of human origin responsible for the presence of particles or of fibers in the ocean, mainly microplastics and textile fibers.
Fabrice Amedeo, skipper of the Imoca Nexans-Wewise: “It is a great satisfaction to start this 2024 season with the sensors on board. We will be able to test them and carry out measurement campaigns between France and the United States during the two Atlantic crossings between France and New York in which I am participating in the spring, before the great adventure of the Vendée Globe. I am very proud to uphold the values of preserving the oceans and to sail in the service of the scientific community. These large blue spaces that I love so much and our planet deserve that we all mobilize. »
