David Roque

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | KAUST · Coastal and Marine Resources Core Lab (CMOR)

The study of the functioning and responses of Antarctica to the current climate change scenario is a priority and a challenge for the scientific community aiming to predict and mitigate impacts at a regional and global scale. Due to the difficulty of obtaining aerial data in such extreme, remote, and difficult-to-reach region of the planet, the dev...

During a diving survey on soft-bottom habitats in the Gulf of Cadiz (Southwestern Spain), the use of the sea cucumber Holothuria arguinensis (Echinodermata, Holothuriidae) as a shelter by juvenile Senegal’s sea bream Diplodus bellottii (Chordata: Sparidae) was observed. Eight juvenile sea bream D. bellottii were videoed sheltering under the sea cuc...

Monitoring for assessment of natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, presents a methodological challenge for the scientific community. Here, we present Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a feasible, precise, rapid and safe tool for real time monitoring of the impacts of a volcanic event during the Cumbre Vieja eruption on La Palma Island, Sp...

Antarctica plays a fundamental role in the Earth's climate, oceanic circulation and global ecosystem. It is a priority and a scientific challenge to understand its functioning and responses under different scenarios of global warming. However, extreme environmental conditions, seasonality and isolation hampers the efforts to achieve a comprehensive...

This campaign report collects the orthomosaics generated with the images obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) during the XXXIV Spanish Antarctic Campaign in Deception Island (South Shetlands Islands, Antarctica) as part of the PiMetAn polar project (Ref RTI2018-098048-B-100). PiMetAn Project (http://pimetan.csic.es/) aims to evaluate the ro...

The GoC shelf waters present much higher concentrations of dissolved Cu, Cd, and Zn than other coastal areas, constituting an important source of these elements onto its neighbouring basins, i.e., the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In this study we assessed the role of the GoC surface currents in the trace metals transport. For this purp...

The African parasitic pea crab Afropinnotheres monodi lives in association with a high number of different bivalve species, although in its reproductive phase (soft females) a high prevalence has been observed infesting mainly intertidal Mytilus galloprovincialis. In recent years this pea crab has been recorded in the south of Iberian Peninsula, wi...

Global circulation of intermediate water masses has been extensively studied; however, its regional and local circulation along continental margins and variability and implications on sea floor morphologies are still not well known. In this study the intermediate water mass variability in the Gulf of Cádiz (GoC) and adjacent areas has been analysed...

As many other Pinnotherid crabs, the African pea crab Afropinnotheres monodi live in association with the mantle cavity of different bivalve species. This pea crab causes a significant reduction of the condition index of the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. The greatest effects brought about for the infestation with soft females (larger size and o...

Global circulation of intermediate water masses has been extensively studied; however, its regional and local circulation along continental margins and variability and implications on sea floor morphologies are still not well known. In this study the intermediate water mass variability in the Gulf of Cádiz and adjacent areas has been analysed and i...

The PRE-SWOT experiment was conducted onboard R/V García del Cid between 5 and 17 May 2018 in the southern region of the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean Sea). PRE-SWOT aimed at anticipating the daily high-resolution 2D SSH fields that Surface Water & Ocean Topography (SWOT) will provide during the fast sampling phase after launch in selecte...

Lines of evidence used in ecological risk assessment (ERA) are essentially three: chemistry, biology and ecotoxicology. Until now, the fundamental assumption made when measuring ecological risks is that organisms are forcedly exposed to stressors. However, when organisms can avoid disturbed habitats by escaping to less stressful areas, the assumpti...

The pathways and transformations of dense water overflows, which depend on small-scale interactions between flow dynamics and erosional-depositional processes, are a central piece in the ocean's large-scale circulation. A novel, high-resolution current and hydrographic data set highlights the intricate pathway travelled by the saline Mediterranean...

Our understanding of bottom-currents and associated oceanographic processes (e.g., overflows, barotropic tidal currents) including intermittent processes (e.g., vertical eddies, deep sea storms, horizontal vortices, internal waves and tsunamis) is rapidly evolving. Many deep-water processes remain poorly understood due to limited direct observation...

The currents measured by a SonTek Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) mounted on an Iver2 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) are compared to those measured by a bottom-mounted Acoustic Wave and Current Meter (AWAC), taken as a reference, in an attempt to evaluate the AUV's performance as a current meter instrument. In October 2013, the AUV pe...

The last 20 years of ocean research have allowed a description of the state of the large scales ocean circulation directly related to the development of two successful inter- national initiatives that lead to new remote and in situ observing systems; the T/P satellite altimetry missions and the Argo in situ programme. As a result, we have concentra...

Our understanding of the role of bottom currents and associated oceanographic processes (e.g, overflows, barotropic tidal currents) including intermittent processes (e.g, vertical eddies, deep sea storms, horizontal vortices, internal waves and tsunamis) is rapidly evolving. Many deep-water processes remain poorly understood due to limited direct o...

We present the evolution, from its conception until today, of an established and internationally recognized Glider Facility. During 8 years of glider activity, new infrastructures and methodologies have been developed increasing glider missions, data, quality and availability. From 2005 to 2010, IMEDEA operated 4 Slocum G1 gliders following a resea...

New monitoring technologies are key components of ocean observatories, also called marine research infrastructures being implemented in the worlds oceans. As a result, new capabilities to characterise, in quasi-real time, the ocean state and its variability at small scales exist today. The challenge is the integration of theses multiplatform observ...

New monitoring technologies are being progressively implemented in open-ocean and coastal observatories. The Mediterranean Sea is a well-known, reduced-scale ocean, an ideal natural laboratory to study global ocean processes, in particular those associated with meso- and submesoscale variability, interactions with mean flows and associated ecosyste...

Mussel culture is one of the most important economic marine resources in Galicia, Spain, a region in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula where mussel production is the highest in Europe. Most of these mussels grow in rafts that are grouped in farms. The mussel farm was located on a small bay on the Rías Altas, with a beach surrounded by rocky cl...

Ocean Data Manager (ODM) is a free software tool developed in MathWorks Inc.'s MATLAB software that allows the homogenization of all sampling data files. The tool provides an easy-to-use graphical interface that can not only to import but also to filter, concatenate, visualize, and export data to more convenient file formats, to Ocean Data View (OD...

Since January 2008, The Guadalquivir Estuary has been equipped with a large amount of instrumentation performing an intensive collection of meteorological, hydrodynamic, hydrological and water-quality parameters. An important effort has been made in setting up a telemetry network to register most of those variables in near real time. All this instr...

Several Low-Cost Drifting Buoys (LCDB) have been designed and constructed at ICMAN-CSIC to determine flow characteristics of The Guadalquivir Estuary. Position and velocity of the drifters can be sent to a local server every ten minutes. The battery module has been dimensioned to provide experiment duration longer than two weeks. Flow patterns regi...