ANTARES-I: a biogeochemical study of the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean

The first expedition of the ANTARES program, the French contribution to Southern-JGOFS, investigated the biology and the chemistry of the benthic environment and the water column in a region located between 60°S–72°E and 39°S–55°E. In this special issue, we present a detailed description of the transports of water masses across the polar front zone, which are corroborated by chemical and microbial tracer studies, a description of the sediment-water interface bridging biological, chemical, and microbial studies, and new insights into the diagenesis of biogenic silica.