The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO) is a research infrastructure distributed throughout Europe for seabed and water column observatories.  It aims to further explore the oceans, better understand the phenomena that occur on the seabed, and elucidate the critical role that these phenomena play in global Earth systems.  This observatory is based on observation sites (or nodes) that have been deployed in strategic locations in European seas, from the Arctic to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.  There are currently eleven deep water nodes plus four shallow water test nodes. 

EMSO Western Ligurian is one of these permanent underwater observatories located in the Ligurian Sea and is deployed off Toulon, France. This region was chosen for its particular scientific interests such as: seismicity, topography, turbidity, biodiversity, water mass dynamics and organic matter flow.  This underwater observation network is also part of KM3NeT (https://www.km3net.org/) which has a modular topology designed to connect up to 120 neutrino detection units. Earth and Sea Science (ESS) instrumentation connected to KM3NeT is based on two complementary components: an instrumented interface module (MII) and an autonomous instrumented line (ALBATROSS).

The ALBATROSS line is an inductive line (2000 m) composed of an acoustic communication system, two inductive cables equipped with CTD-O2 sensors, current meters and two instrumented buoys. This line is deployed at a distance of 2-3 kilometers from the MII, and communication on land is done by an acoustic link with the MII, and electro-optical cable via the KM3NeT node.