PhD Title: "Investigating relationships between upwelling and occurrence of hypoxic waters on shelf regions and their potential impact on demersal communities in NW Africa"

Objectives: The main objective of the PhD is to assess the extent to which upwelling events control the spatio-temporal variability of oxygen concentrations across the Mauritania shelf and in adjacent shelf regions (e.g. Senegal). If upwelling brings off-shore oxygen-poor water on the shelf, this most likely will have impacts on the demersal ecosystem structure, compressing the habitat of demersal fishes, impacting their composition and spawning biomass, while favouring other demersal organisms such as jellyfish.

current activities: I’m currently working in the chemical oceanography laboratory for environmental monitoring of the Mauritanian Exclusive Economic Zone (MEEZ). In particular we assess seawater quality measuring in situ temperature, salinity, pH and oxygen concentration along several transects that are regularly sampled within cruises conducted by our institute for stocks assessment purposes. Also, I’m a collaborator in the EAF Nansen program Theme 10: Biogeochemical processes and productivity of marine ecosystems, I have already participated to three surveys on board the R/V Dr Fridtjof Nansen and I’m currently working with my colleagues to produce the outputs (reports, maps and publications).

-Data mapping using Ocean data View (ODV)

-Data mapping using surfer.

-Programming languages: notions of Phyton, fortran 90 and R