Frédéric Gazeau

My role in MedSeA Villefranche :
I am the responsible scientist of this MedSeA mesocosm experiment. As such, I am in charge of the organization and supervision of this experiment as I was for the previous one in June-July 2012. So far, together with Amélie Sallon, the engineer responsible for the logistics of the experiment and with other colleagues from the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, we have adapted the mesocosms that have been designed in our institute, for an experiment focusing on ocean acidification. In the past months, we have worked on the protocol that will be used in Villefranche and exchanged ideas with our European colleagues during a meeting organized in Rome in March 2012.
On site, beside preparing the mesocosms for the experiment, organizing the samplings and making sure that everything runs as smooth as possible for all participants, I will be involved in various activities, including the measurements of the parameters of the carbonate chemistry, of the gross and net community productions etc…

More about my research
I am a researcher from the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche (LOV), a leading French oceanographic institution. It is a research unit of CNRS and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris6 with a permanent staff of 31 scientists and 20 technicians.
I am a marine biologist, biogeochemist. Specialist in the metabolism (primary production, community respiration, net community production and calcification) of the coastal ocean and its role with respect to air-sea CO2 fluxes. In the past few years, I have been involved in the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA; http://www.epoca-project.eu/), focusing on the effect of ocean acidification on molluscs (adults and larvae, bivalves and pteropods). In the frame of MedSeA, beside the organization of the mesocosm experiments, I am in charge of leading an experiment on the Mediterranean mussel testing the effects of ocean acidification and warming on the growth and metabolism of this very important species. Recently, we have started a project funded by the Fondation BNP-Paribas: the objective of this eFOCE project (http://efoce.eu/) is to develop, validate and implement experimental systems that enable scientists to investigate the long-term effects of acidification in situ on benthic marine communities – i.e. those organisms which live on or near the seabed.