Manon Bickert is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Modena (Modena) in Italy. She studies the formation of the oceanic lithosphere and the mechanism of faulting at ridges, which are tectonic plate boundaries. To do this, she relies on the deformation of rocks, the peridotites, which are brought from the depths of the Earth to the ocean floor by the movements of the faults. On board, she is part of the team of ‘pebbleologists’, who are in charge of describing the sampled rocks. Arc en Sub is her 4th ocenographic mission and the 2nd on the Pourquoi Pas ? “When I was a kid, I was a fan of Cousteau! I always wanted to study the oceans.”
Antoine Demont is a PhD student between IPGP and ENS Paris where he studies the deformation modes of the lithosphere and the numerical modelling of oceanic detachment faults. His work focuses on understanding the location of deformation and its large-scale expression as a function of rheology. Arc en Sub is his first mission at sea. On board he is in charge of the current sensors installed on the seismometers to try to understand the distribution of deep currents on the Rainbow massif. The localisation of hydrothermal activity and deformation on Rainbow will allow him to test hypotheses in his numerical models. “This campaign is a unique opportunity to really see the objects I am working on. Deep sea exploration is an exciting science!”