According to information published by the French Ministry of Armed Forces on February 2022, the French Navy used the Ifremer's Nautile mini-submarine to inspect a submarine cable during a demonstration.
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Mini-submarine Nautile during the Eledone demonstration (Picture source: French Ministry of Armed Forces)
Nautile is a crewed submersible owned by Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Commissioned in 1984, the submersible can be operated at depths of up to 6 km (3.7 mi).
Nautile is capable of housing three people. It has a length of 8 m, still imaging cameras, two-color video cameras, and a number of floodlights. It is fitted with two robotic arms to allow remote manipulation.
Nautile can stay underwater for up to eight hours at a time. Two ships can act as a mothership to Nautile: Pourquoi Pas? and Atalante. In its early days Nautile was launched from RV Nadir.
Ifremer, through its research work and expert advice, contributes to knowledge of the oceans and their resources, to the monitoring of marine and coastal environments, and to the sustainable development of marine activities.
To these ends, Ifremer conceives and operates tools for observation, experimentation, and monitoring, and manages the oceanographic databases.
