 Schooner Tara. | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name |
|
| Builder | SFCN Villeneuve-la-Garenne |
| In service | 1989 |
| Homeport | Lorient, France |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Schooner |
| Displacement | 130 t (130 long tons; 290,000 lb) |
| Length | 36 m (118 ft) |
![Sampling devices and working areas on-board SV Tara are shown from the vessel's [a] side-view, [b] bird's-eye-view of the deck, and [c] inside-view. They consist of the [1] Continuous Surface Sampling System [CSSS]; [2] Rosette Vertical Sampling System [RVSS]; [3] wet lab and storage in liquid nitrogen; [4] High Volume Peristaltic pump [HVP-PUMP]; [5] dry lab; [6] oceanography engineers data acquisition and processing area; [7] winch; [8] video imaging area; [9] storage areas at room temperature; [10] storage areas at +4 degC and -20 degC; [11] MilliQ water system and AC-s system; [12] diving equipment, flowcytobot and ALPHA instruments; and [13] storage boxes. The flow of seawater from the continuous surface sampling system to the dry lab is shown in blue.
Courtesy of the Tara Oceans Expedition Sampling devices and working areas on-board SV Tara.webp](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Sampling_devices_and_working_areas_on-board_SV_Tara.webp/304px-Sampling_devices_and_working_areas_on-board_SV_Tara.webp.png)
The Tara expedition is an oceanic research expedition.
Tara is a 36-metre (118 ft) aluminum-hulled schooner, formerly named "Antarctica" then "Seamaster". [2] Designed by the naval architects Olivier Petit and Luc Bouvet, built in France on the initiative of Jean-Louis Étienne, medical explorer, in 1989 the schooner Antarctica was used from 1991 to 1996 by Jean-Louis Étienne for scientific expeditions in Antarctica, at the Erebus volcano and then wintering at Spitzberg. Under its former name, it was owned by Peter Blake, who was shot and killed in 2001 by pirates while sailing Seamaster on the Amazon River. [2] Following Blake's death, the yacht was bought by Etienne Bourgois, renamed Tara and dedicated to environmental expeditions. [3]
The polar schooner Tara set out to drift in the ice for approximately two years from its first departure, late in August 2006. The expedition met with interest in the oceanography community, especially in the context of the International Polar Year (2007–2008). Dubbed Tara Arctic, this voyage ended on February 23, 2008. It was part of the international DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) program.
In 2009, Tara started a new expedition, dubbed Tara Oceans. [4] It travelled around the world until 2013 to study CO2 capture by marine microorganisms such as plankton on a global scale. The costs of the expedition were €3 million per year, all from private funds. The expedition was primarily funded by the French fashion designer agnès b., [5] however, it was a collaborative effort between the Tara Expeditions Foundation, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and 17 other international partner institutions. [6] It was able to collect more than 35,000 planktonic samples from 210 stations in every major oceanic region, which through analyses revealed more than 40 million genes, most of which were new to science. [4] [7]
The samples were analyzed using a combination of DNA sequencing and microscopy. Of the 40+ million genes identified, the two biggest match domains were 58.8% bacteria and 5.4% viruses. 27.7% were not able to be matched with any currently known domains of life. [8] This fact underscores the vast unknown biological components of the world’s oceans.
In addition to uncovering unknown marine biodiversity, the Tara Oceans Expedition helped us to understand the role of marine microbes in the global ecosystem, address the impacts of climate change on marine life and improve ocean conservation efforts.
One of the other goals of Tara Oceans was to allow open access archives of both raw and validated data sets to scientists around the world as quickly as possible. [1] Links to all of the data sets can be found at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/services/tara-oceans-data. As part of the expedition's public outreach efforts, a short series of documentary videos called The Plankton Chronicles which merged science and art was created by the Villefranche-sur-Mer Marine Station. [9]
Tara Mediterranean was the next expedition that took place over seven months in 2014. It traversed the entire Mediterranean Sea with the goal better understanding the sources, transport, distribution and characteristics of surface floating plastic. [10] One of the major discoveries was that of the 2000 samples taken on the cruise at 300 different sites, all of the samples contained plastic fragments. [11]
Tara Pacific began in May 2016. During this latest voyage Tara is studying coral reefs and plastic pollution.
Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms found in water that are unable to propel themselves against a current. The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucial source of food to many small and large aquatic organisms, such as bivalves, fish, and baleen whales.
Phytoplankton are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words φυτόν, meaning 'plant', and πλαγκτός, meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'.
Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community, having to to consume other organisms to thrive. Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents. Consequently, they drift or are carried along by currents in the ocean, or by currents in seas, lakes or rivers.
Sir Peter James Blake was a New Zealand yachtsman who won the 1989–1990 Whitbread Round the World Race, held the Jules Verne Trophy from 1994 to 1997 by setting the around the world sailing record as co-skipper of ENZA New Zealand, and led New Zealand to successive victories in the America's Cup.
The mesopelagiczone, also known as the middle pelagic or twilight zone, is the part of the pelagic zone that lies between the photic epipelagic and the aphotic bathypelagic zones. It is defined by light, and begins at the depth where only 1% of incident light reaches and ends where there is no light; the depths of this zone are between approximately 200 to 1,000 meters below the ocean surface.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N. Spanning from the western coast of North America to Japan.(Great Pacific Garbage Patch National Geographic 2023) The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America.
Iron fertilization is the intentional introduction of iron-containing compounds to iron-poor areas of the ocean surface to stimulate phytoplankton production. This is intended to enhance biological productivity and/or accelerate carbon dioxide sequestration from the atmosphere. Iron is a trace element necessary for photosynthesis in plants. It is highly insoluble in sea water and in a variety of locations is the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth. Large algal blooms can be created by supplying iron to iron-deficient ocean waters. These blooms can nourish other organisms.
The sea surface microlayer (SML) is the boundary interface between the atmosphere and ocean, covering about 70% of Earth's surface. With an operationally defined thickness between 1 and 1,000 μm (1.0 mm), the SML has physicochemical and biological properties that are measurably distinct from underlying waters. Recent studies now indicate that the SML covers the ocean to a significant extent, and evidence shows that it is an aggregate-enriched biofilm environment with distinct microbial communities. Because of its unique position at the air-sea interface, the SML is central to a range of global marine biogeochemical and climate-related processes.
Gelatinous zooplankton are fragile animals that live in the water column in the ocean. Their delicate bodies have no hard parts and are easily damaged or destroyed. Gelatinous zooplankton are often transparent. All jellyfish are gelatinous zooplankton, but not all gelatinous zooplankton are jellyfish. The most commonly encountered organisms include ctenophores, medusae, salps, and Chaetognatha in coastal waters. However, almost all marine phyla, including Annelida, Mollusca and Arthropoda, contain gelatinous species, but many of those odd species live in the open ocean and the deep sea and are less available to the casual ocean observer. Many gelatinous plankters utilize mucous structures in order to filter feed. Gelatinous zooplankton have also been called Gelata.
Marine plastic pollution is a type of marine pollution by plastics, ranging in size from large original material such as bottles and bags, down to microplastics formed from the fragmentation of plastic material. Marine debris is mainly discarded human rubbish which floats on, or is suspended in the ocean. Eighty percent of marine debris is plastic. Microplastics and nanoplastics result from the breakdown or photodegradation of plastic waste in surface waters, rivers or oceans. Recently, scientists have uncovered nanoplastics in heavy snow, more specifically about 3,000 tons that cover Switzerland yearly.
The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey is one of the longest running marine biological monitoring programmes in the world. Started in 1931 by Sir Alister Hardy and Sir Cyril Lucas, the Survey provides marine scientists and policy-makers with measures of plankton communities, coupled with ocean physical, biological and chemical observations, on a pan-oceanic scale. The Survey is a globally recognised leader on the impacts of environmental change on the health of our oceans.
The North Atlantic garbage patch is a garbage patch of man-made marine debris found floating within the North Atlantic Gyre, originally documented in 1972. A 22-year research study conducted by the Sea Education Association estimates the patch to be hundreds of kilometers across, with a density of more than 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometer. The garbage originates from human-created waste traveling from rivers into the ocean and mainly consists of microplastics. The garbage patch is a large risk to wildlife through plastic consumption and entanglement. There have only been a few awareness and clean-up efforts for the North Atlantic garbage patch, such as The Garbage Patch State at UNESCO and The Ocean Cleanup, as most of the research and cleanup efforts have been focused on the Great Pacific garbage patch, a similar garbage patch in the north Pacific.
Limacina rangii is a species of swimming sea snail in the family Limacinidae, which belong to the group commonly known as sea butterflies (Thecosomata).
Marine microorganisms are defined by their habitat as microorganisms living in a marine environment, that is, in the saltwater of a sea or ocean or the brackish water of a coastal estuary. A microorganism is any microscopic living organism or virus, that is too small to see with the unaided human eye without magnification. Microorganisms are very diverse. They can be single-celled or multicellular and include bacteria, archaea, viruses and most protozoa, as well as some fungi, algae, and animals, such as rotifers and copepods. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages. Some microbiologists also classify viruses as microorganisms, but others consider these as non-living.
Alexandra (Alex) Z. Worden is a microbial ecologist and genome scientist known for her expertise in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes and their influence on global biogeochemical cycles.
Marine primary production is the chemical synthesis in the ocean of organic compounds from atmospheric or dissolved carbon dioxide. It principally occurs through the process of photosynthesis, which uses light as its source of energy, but it also occurs through chemosynthesis, which uses the oxidation or reduction of inorganic chemical compounds as its source of energy. Almost all life on Earth relies directly or indirectly on primary production. The organisms responsible for primary production are called primary producers or autotrophs.
Éric Karsenti is a French biologist. Research Director at the CNRS, he was the scientific director of the Tara Oceans expedition.
Marine protists are defined by their habitat as protists that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Life originated as marine single-celled prokaryotes and later evolved into more complex eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are the more developed life forms known as plants, animals, fungi and protists. Protists are the eukaryotes that cannot be classified as plants, fungi or animals. They are mostly single-celled and microscopic. The term protist came into use historically as a term of convenience for eukaryotes that cannot be strictly classified as plants, animals or fungi. They are not a part of modern cladistics because they are paraphyletic.
Tatiana Rynearson is an American oceanographer who is a professor at the University of Rhode Island. Her research considers plankton diversity and abundance. Rynearson has been on several research cruises, including trips to the North Sea, Puget Sound, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic.
The Mediterranean Sea has been defined as one of the seas most affected by marine plastic pollution.