MYCTOPHIDAE, a travel in deep seas | A Festival Ressac exhibition

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The oceans? A vastness, a wealth and one of the keys to the functioning of life on our planet. And yet the mysteries are still many. In this partially known world, lanternfish or myctophidae, are very abundant from the equator to the coldest areas, from the surface to several hundred metres deep.

Who are they, what do they look like, what are they doing there? How can we unravel the enigma of this environment that is impossible to observe with our eyes?

 

Led by Gildas Roudaut, some scientists (IRD, CNRS, MNHN, CPS) have initiated a dialogue with a class of Applied Arts (STD2A) of the Vauban High School in Brest.

These exchanges gave rise to an exhibition, MYCTOPHIDAE, presented at the IUEM, and a magazine, La Lanterne, created with the support of the UBO and the IRD as part of the Ressac Festival .

The exhibition can be visited at the Bibiothèque Universitaire du Bouguen (10, av. Victor le Gorgeu, Brest), from 18 November 2019 to 6 January 2020.

It is also available in pDF format (low resolution), on this page.

Exposition Myctophidae

The magazine La Lanterne is available for download here.

 

Credits:

Editing and proofreading: Gildas Roudaut, Jérémie Habasque, Anne Lebourges-Dhaussy, Cindy Dupoux, Élodie Vourey, Anna Conchon, Cédric Cotté, Antoine Choplin, Yves Cherel, Sébastien Hervé
Graphic design and layout: Sébastien Hervé assisted by Fred Grunchec and Pauline Ferrec
Acknowledgements: IRD’s Scientific and Technological Culture Mission, Christine Paillard and Emmanuelle Dilasser

Immersion Sciences 2021, with Ika Paul-Pont

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Attracting young Bretons to scientific fields of study

Our biologist colleague Ika Paul-Pont took part in the 10th edition of the Immersion Sciences operation.

Demystifying the idea that young people have of scientific careers in order to encourage them to take up these courses of study after the baccalauréat is the ambition of the Immersion Sciences operation run by the Académie de Rennes, the Région Bretagne and the CNRS. Since 2011, at the end of March, around sixty students have usually had the chance to discover research careers for a week at the Île-Tudy nautical centre, in contact with passionate scientists.

Due to the health crisis, it was not possible this year to welcome a group of high school students to the Île-Tudy Nautical Centre, and the operation took place over two half-days of video-conferences with researchers organised on 30 and 31 March, before visits to laboratories at the end of the school year.

Ika Paul-Pont, the epidemiologist Caroline Rault and the physicist Maud Guézo, were able to talk about their activities and their careers, to dispel some of the persistent myths about researchers and to introduce young people to the world of research and scientific careers, in order to make them want to “do” science.

It was also an opportunity for Ika to talk about plastic pollution. The students were very concerned and their questions focused on both the facts (is it not too late? and in relation to climate change? what is the role of governments?) and on solutions (cleaning robots, new polymers).

We look forward to the 2022 edition!

Read more about operation Immersion Sciences (external link in French).

 

Immersion Science

 

Plastic pollution awareness on Ouessant island

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As part of the Preventing Plastic Pollution project, the partners CNRS, Océanopolis and the Parc Naturel Marin d’Iroise went to the island of Ouessant for two days to raise awareness of plastic pollution among schoolchildren and the island’s inhabitants. The various workshops carried out sought to explain the problem of plastic waste at sea as well as the consequences of pollution by microplastics on marine organisms. Particular attention was also paid to the management of waste in an island environment.

Fifteen secondary school students, from the 6th to the 3rd grade, took part in a first session of exchanges in class, with an initial information session on the research professions and then on the characteristics of plastics and microplastics. Then, the students were divided into three practical workshops.

  • The first workshop consisted of observing microalgae (oyster food) and coloured microplastics (polyethylene) under a microscope in order to explain how oysters feed and to raise the first questions in connection with the next workshop.
  • The second workshop aimed at setting up a scientific approach to observe and identify the impacts of microplastics on oysters (external link in French).
  • Finally, the last workshop was dedicated to identifying the different types and forms of plastics present in our daily lives: from textile fibres to industrial plastic granules (IPG) that can be found on beaches.

The next day, the facilitators and the pupils went to the Prat beach to collect macro-waste. Fishing nets, ropes, water bottles and cigarette butts were collected. The waste was then identified and counted according to the OSPAR protocol. The schoolchildren were then able to test the participatory science protocol developed by Océanopolis to collect and count microplastics. To do this, they took the first two centimetres of sediment at the most recent sea level and carried out a densimetric separation using a prototype.

The students then played the game of a “zero waste picnic” prepared by themselves: water bottles, bee wraps and reusable containers were all on the menu.

The afternoon ended with a workshop, initiated by the Association des Iles du Ponant and the Parc Naturel Régional d’Armorique, with a dozen eco-actors and inhabitants of the island of Ouessant. Discussions revolved around microplastics, related research activities, the use of the Océanopolis participative science kit and the involvement of everyone in the ecological transition on the island.

These awareness-raising days with schoolchildren and the island’s inhabitants will have led to the creation of new projects involving PPP partners and Ouessant island stakeholders. Exchanges are underway to involve the schoolchildren in the work carried out on the management of illegal dumping, led by the Iroise Natural Marine Park. The school also wants to get involved in the long-term participatory science project, which will provide new data on plastics for the PPP project. The first meeting of the island’s eco-actors will also have enabled exchanges to be launched around various projects such as the use of tidal bins or the creation of a recycling centre on the island.