Between July 23 and August 10 of this year, the CONICET, next to Naval Hydrography Service and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, He starred in an unprecedented exploration in the depths of the submarine cannon of Mar del Plata. This expedition, called “Underwater Oases of Mar del Plata Canyon: Continental Slope IV ”developed aboard the ship Falkor And he toured a land so far almost unexplored, about 3,900 meters deep, with a scientific, technological and social impact that marked a before and after. For the agency, beaten by government adjustment policies. It meant the opportunity to make visible their claims, and also to organize a second expedition that is already in its phase of preparations. CONICET reinvents itself.
Viral. The heart of the mission was the underwater robot Rov auctionequipped to capture images in Ultrahd and collect biological samples – water, sediments, plankton – without altering the ecosystem. The technology allowed to make observations on situ of the biodiversity of the cannon, in addition to installing traps for crustaceans and zooplankton in the seabed.
The underwater canyon is located 310 kilometers east of Mar del Plata and is considered a key ecological corridor, which faces threats for fishing exploitation and plastic pollution. During the exploration objects such as a boot, a screwdriver and even a bag with Chinese characters were recovered, evidencing the human presence even in the marine depths.
Without a doubt, a milestone of this campaign was the live broadcast of all the dives, via YouTube, a scoop for an Argentine scientific expedition. The reception obtained between 30,000 and 80,000 simultaneous spectators, and even an average of 500,000 immersion views, totaling almost 18 million visualizations in three weeks. Even streaming performance overshadowed the president’s national chain Javier Milei, broadcast on Friday night, August 8.
According to the different portals, the president’s speech accumulated only 6,604 visualizations, while one of the most recent transmissions of the scientific mission exceeded 920,000 views, a call had been disseminated on social networks to tune the transmission.
Struggle. Since his electoral campaign, Milei chose Conicet as the center of his attacks, making the body an answer symbol against adjustment policies. According to workers and researchers belonging to the Council, libertarian management seeks to deepen the decking through its manager, the president Daniel Salamone. Frozen scholarships, entry of paralyzed researchers and devaluated salaries are part of latent reality.
“We are losing generations. Many colleagues already left or are about to leave. The country invested years in training, and each researcher that is going is a lost capital. This group, for example, includes three generations: my directors, my colleagues, our fellows. We are already having serious problems to sustain it,” warned the biologist Gregorio Bigatti to the profile.com.
As transcended, in the area of social sciences and humanities, some members of the Board of Directors proposed not to grant income for that sector, proposal supported by Salamone. Under the “priority issues” category, we sought to guide what remains of public research, at the expense of those research that intends to understand social, political, economic and cultural problems.
In this context, protest days will be held in different parts of the country, where researchers, support and administrative staff of CONICET will participate. With the slogan “In Conicet there is no one left over”, they will claim for the granting of the 845 compromised income, the discharge of the income of the 2022 call, the call of the current year, the financing of projects, the extraordinary scholarships for entrants and the salary recomposition.
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