MARIA S. MERIAN MSM15/5

The cruise 15/5 of the German research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN (17 July - 30 July 2010) starts at Valletta (Malta) and ends in Rostock (Germany). Chief scientist is Dr. Ingo Grevemeyer of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR. The aim of the cruise is defining the plate boundary between Europe and Africa in the western Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. There the African plate collides with the European plate. Normally these plate boundaries are areas of numerous earthquakes. However, in the Alboran sea and in the Gulf of Cadiz the plate boundary configuration is not well defined and seismicity supports a rather diffuse plate boundary zone. During the cruise MSM15/5 seismological long-term stations will be recovered that monitored for approx. 6 month the local and regional seismicity between Europe and Africa. In addition scientists from the University of Tübingen (Germany) take samples of Foraminifera from the upper layers of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.