Gulf of La Spezia

MARE Laboratory Eastern Ligurian Sea

The MARE (sea) Laboratory submarine observatory, in the Eastern Ligurian Sea, is an infrastructure financed, in the first instance, by the Liguria Region (PAR-FSC 2007-2013 “Fund for Development and Cohesion” resources) and shared among several Italian national research organizations and institutes, in particular the Ligurian Marine Technology District (DLTM), the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), the Hydrographic Institute of the Navy (IIM) as well as the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR).

The MARE Laboratory consists of two observatories: the first wired and coastal, installed from March 2020 at a depth of 10 m, inside the Bay of St. Teresa in the Gulf of La Spezia; while the second is a stand-alone mooring, installed from September 2019 on a 600 m seabed, off the Cinque Terre Marine Protected Area.

The coastal station is equipped with sensors for measuring water temperature and salinity, as well as the earth’s gravimetric field. It is also equipped with special cages designed specifically to contain different types of plastic materials in order to study their degradation.

The deep station, on the other hand, is set up with a number of instruments for monitoring key marine physical parameters, such as current meters, sensors to measure temperature and salinity at three different depths along the water column, as well as sediment traps. Since October 2022, a special cage containing various kinds of plastic material has also been installed at this site to study its degradation in the deep environment.

The MARE Laboratory has a dual function: test site and environmental monitoring. Specifically, the coastal station represents a test site, where project partners or those who request it can test innovative instrumentation in the marine environment and exchange data in real time. In contrast, the deep station is an environmental monitoring site whose main objective is to study local dynamics and long-term climate change. The acquired data will also help study deep ecosystems with high biodiversity, such as those of white corals found in the area, which are exposed to risks from fishing and climate change.