REL Facilities

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REL's aquaria have a total capacity of 8000 L under running sea water system (Figure 1). The seawater is pumped into the laboratory from the front of Monaco bay at 30-meter's depth, 500 meter from the laboratory at a flux rate of 7000L per hour (Figure 2).

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After sand filtration (Figure 3), U.V sterilization, heating, or cooling (Figure 4), the seawater is distributed to specific aquaria from 5 to 3000L (Figure 5a & Figure 5b ). Tropical, temperate and artic ecosystem are recreated in specific tanks where the principal seawater parameters such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen,

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pH are permanently controlled and registered (Figure 6).

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Light quality, quantity, cycling can be varied for each specific microcosm, from phytoplankton cultures to the coral colony aquaria (Figure 7).

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Reef barrier aquaria could be set up at the same time as deep sediment arctic aquaria or temperate shark aquaria on humid bench design for radiotracer work (Figure 8).

A new humid bench will be installed this autumn that will double our experimental capacity.

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Diverse marine animals including starfish, jellyfish, sea urchin, bivalve, coral, bony fish and shark are imported from member states countries and maintained in REL's aquaria for monthly experiments, using different radiotracers in supervised areas (Figure 9).

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In such facilities, fellows from Member States (Figure 10), students (Figure 11), technicians and researchers from different countries use radiotracer techniques to study pollutant impact on specific marine organisms and food chain transfers.

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Our large REL laboratory is coupled to a counting room within NaI(Tl), HPGe, alpha spectrometers and beta counters that make it one of the most competitive units in the radioecological field (Figure 12).

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General view of a laboratory used for preparing field work and for processing samples

Image 15 Micro-analyser for carbon and nitrogen in marine water column and sediment particles

Two laboratories are set to work on natural levels of radioactivity. One is mostly devoted to the preparation and processing of samples collected at sea and includes all basic equipment of a wet laboratory, i.e. filtration facilities, centrifuges, ovens, freeze-dryer among others. The second one includes analytical equipment used in biogeochemistry and includes an elemental analyser (VarioEl micro-analyser for carbon, nitrogen and sulphur), binocular microscopy facilities, spectrometer and fluorometer.

Image 16 Large area collection (1 m²) sediment traps on board of a coastal ship used to assess vertical flux of particles and associated compounds including radionuclides.

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Deployment of a 2 km-long mooring in the Mediterranean Sea including sediment traps.

Sediment traps from Technicap- France are regularly used in the field to direct assess the vertical flux of particles, radionuclides, carbon and associated elements. These are deployed either as drifting arrays during short periods (a few days) or moored for longer periods of observation (weeks to months).

Image 20 In-situ large volume pump used in studies of particulate and dissolved material in the water column.

In-situ pumps are used to filter large volumes (100 to 900 liters) of water, to collect particles and selected dissolved elements in MnO₂ impregnated cartridges. These pumps deployed at different depths provide a unique tool to study vertical profiles of radionuclides, organic compounds and inorganic chemical elements.