The Generic Instrument Module of the European Multidisciplinary Observatory of the Seabed and the Water Column (EMSO EGIM) Research Infrastructure (EMSO ERIC) in which PLOCAN participates, represents a crucial step towards standardization and interoperability for monitoring the oceans, according to an article published in Frontiers in Marine Science,
In the article, entitled “The EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM): Standardized and interoperable instrumentation for ocean observation” published in Frontiers in Marine Science, several members of PLOCAN have participated: Eric Delory, Andrés Cianca, Xabier Remirez, y Raul Santana.
The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO), is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), with the aim of providing long-term observations via fixed-point ocean observatories in key environmental locations across European seas from the Arctic to the Black Sea.
These may be supported by ship-based observations and autonomous systems such as gliders. In this paper, we present the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM), a deployment ready multi-sensor instrumentation module, designed to measure physical, biogeochemical, biological and ecosystem variables consistently, in a range of marine environments, over long periods of time.
Here, we describe the system, features, configuration, operation and data management. We demonstrate, through a series of coastal and oceanic pilot experiments that the EGIM is a valuable standard ocean observation module, which can significantly improve the capacity of existing ocean observatories and provides the basis for new observatories.
The diverse examples of use included the monitoring of fish activity response upon oceanographic variability, hydrothermal vent fluids and particle dispersion, passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and time series of environmental variation in the water column.
With the EGIM available to all the EMSO Regional Facilities, EMSO will be reaching a milestone in standardization and interoperability, marking a key capability advancement in addressing issues of sustainability in resource and habitat management of the oceans.
Deployed in waters off La Palma
An EGIM was deployed at the end of last year in waters near the La Palma volcano in order to assess and monitor the impact of the volcano’s activity on the marine ecosystem, with the support of Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) and the Technical University of Catalonia.
