Several Vendée Globe skippers (link 1) have accepted to launch 1 Argo float in the South Atlantic during their race around the globe. The position of the launched has been defined with the scientists to complete the world coverage of the existing float fleet. For this adventure, most of the floats have been adopted by a French school with the names of the children written on it.

The Argo floats (link 2) drift and measure several parameters of the ocean including the temperature, the salinity and the oxygen of the seawater from 2000m deep to the surface.

As soon as these 10 floats identified by their international unique identifier (what we call the WMO code, a series of numbers) have been launched by the skippers (the table shows the detail), they started to measure the sea parameters. This real time data has been continuously integrated in databases and is available to users through this product (link 3) of the European Copernicus Marine service.

Boat name	Skipper name	Float serial	WMO	Vidéo
V&B MAYENNE	Maxime Sorel	AI3500-23FR008	1902729
SINGCHAIN	Jingkun Xu	AI3500-23FR009	5907135	https://twitter.com/XJKRacingTeam/status/1863137962348683694
OLIVER HEER OCEAN RACING	Oliver Heer	AI3500-23FR010	3902619	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugrzpm5l7d0
FREELANCE.COM	Guirec Soudée	AI3500-23FR011	5907136	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1x9cbANbLA
NEXANS SOLO SAILOR	Fabrice Amedeo	AI3500-23FR012	6990673	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wdsdNrqAUbA
VULNERABLE 2	Sam Goodchild	AI3500-23FR013	7902229	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1sMUK0gX1o
FOUSSIER	Sébastien Marsset	AI3500-23FR014	3902620	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvIOKNyMVBc
PAPREC ARKEA	Yoann Richomme	AI3500-23FR015	3902621	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J8Ouu67KCk8
DMG MORI	Kojiro Shiraishi	AI3500-24FR001	3902622	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPPlpdhcIfA
NEW EUROPE	Szabi Weores	AI3500-24FR002	1902730

News written thanks to the support of Noé Poffa and Vincent Bernard (Ifremer, France)

 

To go further

• The European contribution to the Argo programme https://www.euro-argo.eu/
• The argo-day news made by Ifremer https://www.ifremer.fr/fr/actualites/argo-day-top-depart-pour-les-flotteurs-argo
• The Copernicus marine service https://marine.copernicus.eu/

 

Link 1: https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/article/vendee-globe-skippers-will-take-scientific-measuring-equipment-them

link 2: https://argo.ucsd.edu/

link 3: https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/INSITU_GLO_PHYBGCWAV_DISCRETE_MYNRT_013_030/description