Julien Marticorena, a newcomer in the ABYSSA team!

The partnership initiated between ABYSSA and Ifremer allowed the hiring of an R&D engineer as part of the France Relance plan.

In August 2021, ABYSSA SAS signed a Memorandum Of Understanding with the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) with a view to fostering cooperation, sharing knowledge and pooling operational resources related to the study of deep-sea marine environments.

As part of this partnership, a project entitled “Recovery Plan – Support for Jobs in Research and Development” has been submitted to the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI). Implemented at the beginning of 2022, the project emphasises the need to develop cooperative R&D programmes in order to continue the technical and scientific development of ABYSSA while ensuring the acquisition of fundamental data on deep-sea environments.

A first R&D engineer contract in collaboration with Ifremer/ABYSSA has also been signed, with the hiring of Julien Marticorena, who recently obtained a PhD in marine ecology at the Ifremer’s Deep-sea Environment Laboratory. The project benefits from the France Relance plan set up by the French government and will combine the use of the multidisciplinary data collected by Ifremer over the past several years on deep-sea environments and ABYSSA’s geosciences and mapping skills, to acquire essential information on communities’ distribution. The effective sharing of knowledge within the framework of this project should help to strengthen the assessment of the biological and mineral seafloor heritage of the deep-sea in order to implement actions for the protection and preservation of resources.