Exploring the ocean’s depths

Advances in oceanographic research should improve exploration success as well as enhance safety and environmental protection. By Bruno Savoye and Myriam Sibuet, Ifremer, and Alain Morash and Jacques Minet, TotalFinaElf, Exploration & Production

OCEANOGRAPHERS, geologists and marine biologists are joining forces to find out more about the ocean's depths - their geography, history, resources and life forms. This quest provides the focus for two related projects: Zaiango (for Zaire, Angola and Congo), which studies the network of subsea valleys carved in the ocean floor by subsea avalanches, related to the outflow of the Zaire River; and the Biozaire project, which is pursuing a study of the benthic ecosystems at a number of locations along the continental margins off Angola and Gabon. Since 1998, study expeditions have been carried out jointly by Ifremer (the French research institute for exploitation of the sea) and TotalFinaElf. Th