Final Activity Report Summary - MOMARNET (Monitoring deep seafloor hydrothermal environments on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) MOMARNET was successful in three primary and equally important ways: 1- in training the next generation of European scientists. MOMARNET provided a stimulating and international training environment for 13 young researchers in disciplines as diverse as geophysics, computer science, marine biology and microbiology. We organised four well attended training courses. Details on these, extracted from the MOMARNET website, could be found in the 'MoMARnetcourses.pdf document. We also promoted participation of the young researchers in seagoing cruises, as described in the document MoMARnetCruises.doc and emphasised on their scientific research at our four network meetings, as described in the MoMARnetmeetings.pdf document, by having a full day of science talks in each meeting agenda. Finally, we systematically promoted their attendance to international conferences and workshops. Success in this training plan could be measured by the fact that out of the 13 young MOMARNET researchers, four secured a post-doctoral position in their field, four had temporary academic positions and another four obtained an extension of their studentship from their host institution. 2. in producing exciting multidisciplinary science. MOMARNET resulted in a large set of robust science results, publicised in more than 70 abstracts to conferences and published in more than 40 peer-reviewed papers, as described in the Momarnet_Publications.doc document. Highlights of these results were also presented in the document ScienceHighlights.doc. These concerned the tectonic and magmatic controls on hydrothermalism at mid-ocean ridges, the development of new mosaicing algorithms for use on deep sea remotely operated vehicles (ROV) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) imaging data, the organic chemistry of hydrothermal vent fluids and its possible applications to the origin of life on Earth and other planets, a new method for measuring methane in deep sea hydrothermal fluids, the role of fine-scale chemical gradients on organisms which lived at deep sea vents, the characterisation of epibiotic bacteria from the hydrothermal vent shrimps, the dynamic response of the endosymbionts of the vent mussels to changes in the composition of their energy substrates and the impact of temperature and pressure on the reproductive cycle, and, finally, on the growth of shallow water and vent invertebrates. Together, these results constituted a strong contribution to the emerging field of multidisciplinary research on deep sea environments. 3. in building the European science community. MOMARNET brought together scientists working on deep seafloor hydrothermal environments in Europe at a critical time, when monitoring of these environments was brought forward in European Community projects, such as the European Sea Observatory Network - European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observation (ESONET-EMSO). MOMARNET, consisting of 13 research groups in eight European countries, played a significant role in the early stages of ESONET-EMSO planning and its scientists were important players in the ESONET NoE since its initiation, two years prior to the project completion. MOMARNET synergies and science fed the ideas behind the ESONET-funded MoMAR-Demo project for a pilot deep seafloor observatory experiment at the mid-Atlantic ridge, which was planned to be implemented in 2010-2011. The visibility of the MOMARNET contribution was also illustrated by the number of hits, of 11,000 approximately, recorded on the project website since its re-design in 2006. A summary of the content of this web site was included in the document SummaryMoMARnetweb.pdf.
