CALENDAR
2025-2026
LOCALISATION
Dieppe – Le Tréport, FRANCE
Context
As part of its mission to coordinate environmental studies related to marine energy, the GIS EMDT has its own budget allocation.
Free to define its priorities, it selects the most relevant projects to strengthen scientific and environmental knowledge.
This project, dedicated to zooplankton communities, is part of this approach. It complements the usual regulatory monitoring by introducing an exploratory approach using environmental DNA (eDNA), in order to improve the detection and characterization of the planktonic biodiversity, including rare, cryptic or invasive species, and thus consolidate the scientific robustness of the environmental monitoring of the wind farm.
DETAILED MISSIONS
The mission consisted of complementing the monitoring of zooplankton communities by integrating environmental DNA (DNA) molecular analyses, which began in 2022 before the construction phase of the Dieppe offshore wind farm.
Two marine campaigns were scheduled in 2025 (spring and autumn) on 5 stations arranged along a steep coast gradient. At each station, samples of zooplankton were collected by WP2 (bulk) net and volumes of water were sampled and filtered (filtered), with two replicates per station. In total, 30 samples were produced and analyzed by metabarcoding using two complementary markers (18S_Fonseca and COI_Leray).
The extraction, sequencing and bioinformatics processing were carried out by the laboratory. Argaly.
The objective was to compare the results obtained through morphological and molecular identification, to test the sensitivity of the ADNe and to provide additional data to strengthen the robustness of the zooplankton monitoring program of the park.
