ROV3G scientific cruise is dedicated to the morpho-tectonic study of the ligurian shelf, through the acquisition of bathymetric data and optical images with HROV Ariane. This cruise took place on R/V Europe in october 2021, and constituted a pedagogic project for the students of  Master 3G Recherche, Géologie et Géophysique, of Université Côte d'Azur (UCA), attached to Géoazur lab. The M2 students were in charge of the scientific project, they determined the goals of the cruise, took part in the acquisition and interpretation of the data. 

During the 3 days cruise, we acquired bathymetric data at shallow depth on the continental shelf offshore Santo Stefano al Mare and San Lorenzo al Mare, along the Ligurian coast. The bathymetry on the continental shelf exhibits morphologies that are probably related to the Flyschs formation that is outcroping onshore (Stani et al., 2010), and that is partially capped by late quaternary deposits (as identified in seismic data and interpreted in Bozzano et al., 2006). Ridges identified as paleo-shorelines (paleo-beaches?) have been investigated with HROV ariane whose navigation is also published here. Videos are available on video.ifremer.fr

Here we publish two bathymetric grids at high-resolution, calculated from the ME70 multibeam echosounder of R/V Europe, using GLOBE software (Poncelet et al., 2022). The shallowest part of the plateau is gridded in a 5 m digital elevation model (DEM), while the entire survey area is gridded at 10m resolution. The back-scatter maps, gridded at 6 m, produced with Sonarscope software (Augustin et al., 2022), are also available (raw and compensated). All grids are in WGS84 (EPSG:4326).

The cruise report (written in french) is also available.