In 2001 the main electro-optical cable between the shore at the Les Sablettes beach near La Seyne sur Mer and the future Antares site South of the Porquerolles island at 42°48’N, 6°10’E was laid over a distance of about 40km
In 2002 the junction box was installed as first active element of the detector. It distributes the power from the main cable to secondary outputs and feeds the data from the detection lines into the main cable via fibres. The junction box operated for the full lifetime of the ANTARES experiment flawlessly. The left photo below shows the junction box during deployment in 2002 while the right photo shows it on the seabed after almost 20 years of operation.
After the deployment of test lines between 2003 and 2005 the twelve detection lines have been installed between February 2006 until May 2008. All deployment campaigns have been carried out with the Castor 02 vessel from Foselev Marine. The photos below show the first detection line waiting for deployment (left) and onboard the Castor 02 vessel.
First the line line anchor is deployed (left) followed by the 25 storeys (right) and the buoy.
The last but very important step is the connection between the line anchor and the junction box using an interlink cable. The photo on the left shows the moment just before plugging the cable into the line connector on the anchor of line 1 in March 2006. Most of these deep sea connection operations have been realised with the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Victor 6000 from IFREMER (right).
