Tara Oceans

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Tara hast left for NYC (USA). Tara will be docking at Battery Park, North Cove Marina. (Arriving Sunday February 5, 4PM)

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01/25/2012

Tara soon in the Gulf Stream

Tara arrived Friday, January 20th in Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. On Thursday, the schooner will set sail for New York, and during this leg will sample seawater from the region where of the Gulf Stream begins. Among the 15 crew members, the navigator and journalist Catherine Chabaud, embarked on this leg and re-discovered Tara with open joy.

Anybody who has returned to sail on Tara  knows that seeing the “whale” again is a very emotional moment.  I first looked for 2 masts of the same size, with their fluorescent orange tops, and after spotting those, I saw her rounded flanks sitting high in the water. And then a flood of memories came back, from my other voyages aboard Tara : unloading skis with the “Mountains of Silence” team, at the beginning of Shackleton’s Route, in South Georgia; sailing amidst the ice of the Antarctic Peninsula, the long hours on the foredeck with Sebastião Salgado, the photographer, waiting for a leopard seal to appear, the conversations in the wheelhouse or in the mess-room. 

Since then, a wet lab has been added on Tara’s deck which allows scientists to filter water samples collected  by the rosette, which is also kept on the back deck. A cabin has been transformed into an “optical laboratory” (the “dry lab”) where scientists analyze and photograph the freshly sampled microorganisms with cameras and microscopes.

One thing struck me since I boarded 2 days ago: during the expeditions I participated in before, in South Georgia and Antarctica, our favorite subjects were icebergs, penguins, and sea lions -- photographed and filmed from every possible angle. Today, on the Tara Oceans expedition, our stars are viruses, bacteria, diatoms, copepods...They are the focus of everybody’s attention and subject of all conversations. A flat screen on a wall in the mess-room shows images of magnified “sea dust”, mostly invisible to the naked eye, exhibiting their unusual and beautiful forms. 

In the days before departure, there’s excitement on board: scientists are preparing their sample tubes, using the protocol defined in advance for the entire expedition. With Loïc Valletta, captain, they analyze charts showing the currents, and study ideal locations for the next sampling stations. In the morning, high school students from Savannah visit Tara. On Tuesday morning, I shared this experience with advisors at the ‘Conseil Economique, Social et Environmental’, live via Skype. Tuesday afternoon, the two leaders of this scientific leg, Lars Stemman and Daniele Iudicone, presented the work of Tara Oceans at the University of Savannah, and in the evening there were cocktails for the crew: Marc Picheral, research engineer at the Laboratory of Oceanography in Villefranche, had just learned that the CNRS
was awarding him the “Cristal”, the highest distinction for a research enginneer.

On Thursday, we will go down the Savannah River, like the container ships which transit here. Savannah is considered to be the second largest commercial port in the United States. The sea is 20 nautical miles away and we should have fair wind for our departure.

Good luck to all. You’ll be hearing from me soon, out in the open sea!

Catherine Chabaud

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Tara Science: Tara Oceans’ Mission

In earlier articles, we looked into the worlds of plankton; bacteria and viruses; and also the relationship between climate & oceans. The time has come to close the “Tara Science” section of our website as the boat heads back to home port. In way of conclusion, here is an overview of the scientific aspects of the Tara Oceans expedition. 

 More than 100,000 kilometers traveled, 40 countries visited.  Hundreds of scientists involved all over the world.  Two and a half years of navigation on all the planet’s oceans. A gigantic and totally unique  project. So many resources, so much energy mobilized.... “Just for plankton” one might say. Yes, just for plankton, but our goals are extremely important.

We have seen that planctonic micro-organisms and their marine environments are essential to the functioning of the great climate machine. A machine that is showing signs of exhaustion,    and even having some failures: global warming, excess of carbon dioxide, ocean acidification, etc. Before looking for solutions to fix the machine, we must try to learn more about those aspects still largely unknown. In other words, dive to the bottom of the sea.

98% of the oceans’ biomass consists of micro-organisms, but so far only about 10% of them have been identified. The goal of Tara Oceans is to explore this subject that’s been ignored for too long, by sampling with identical methods all over the world, thus obtaining a “state of the planet’s oceans”. What’s more, our sampling stations have been carefully chosen to include upwelling systems, major ocean currents, and zones especially rich in plankton. Another unique aspect of Tara Oceans is our goal of bringing together scientists from many different fields who would otherwise rarely have the occasion to work together: biologists, oceanographers, physicists, geneticists...all in the same boat.

On board, we’ve assembled a huge array of tools for sampling, visualisation and analysis, combining all these specialties. The heart of these precious tools is the rosette. Lowered down to a given depth, the rosette records dozens of the water’s physical and chemical properties, while simultaneously taking samples. The samples are conserved on board using various procedures, before being sent to laboratory teams on land. Then a new, equally fascinating adventure begins. Sent to Heidelberg, Germany, the precious samples are then divided among 15 partner laboratories around the world, according to each one’s specialty:  

Barcelona, for the study of bacteria, Arizona for viruses, Villefranche-sur-Mer for  zooplankton and oceanographic data, not to mention the teams working exclusively on coral.    

Among various areas of research, the expedition focuses on the genetic analysis of samples, and more specifically, “metagenomics”. Put simply, this is the study of genes, not of one particular species, but of an entire population -- all the species collected in the rosette’s bottles, or in a net: bacteria, viruses and protists mixed together. To navigate through the jungle of genes obtained from these different sources, scientists refer to a collection of  “reference genomes”, representing all the genes of a single organism. To enlarge this collection, researchers work on known species grown in the laboratory, but also use a new technique, still in its infancy: WGA (Whole Genome Amplification). This procedure allows for sequencing the genome of a species from a single cell, or from a single individual in the case of protists. A real ‘tour de force’ that reveals the secrets of species hitherto unknown.

Here again the collaboration between different laboratories works wonders: biologists select species that seem most interesting to them, so that geneticists can sequence them with the goal of increasing the collection of reference genomes. For metagenomics specialists working on the entire population in a sample, this data can connect a certain gene to a large planktonic family. We’ll be able to say, for example, that in the population sampled, a certain family of protists is in the majority.

At the same time, thanks to the rosette, oceanographers can connect this information with  physico-chemical data concerning the water where the sample was taken: temperature, depth, salinity, oxygen concentration, etc. For each station, various specialists are working together to characterize the sampling area and discover the complex ecosystem living under Tara’s hull. Understandably, with 150 sampling stations carried out in two and a half years of navigation, the information collected aboard will take years to be analyzed in the partner laboratories on land.

As the mission nears its conclusion, with Tara returning in late March to Lorient, the first results in the form of scientific publications will appear over the course of  the year. To  increase the pace of what we learn from this important mission, Tara Oceans has opted to share these results with scientists around the world. Even the smallest genome sequenced will be made available on the Internet, in order to feed a global bank of genes accessible to everyone. By sharing the work emerging from the enormous quantity of data collected aboard Tara, we can gradually increase our knowledge of  the still mysterious world of oceans and plankton. May this increased knowledge bring about greater efforts in conservation. Let’s hope it’s not too late!

Yann Chavance

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Tara Oceans

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Calendrier Evénements

02/05/2012

Tara in NYC !

02/05/2012

Tara will be in New York from February 5th to 12th 2012.

More information coming very soon.

09/05/2011

Third year stops over

09/05/2011

Third year (from Sept 2011 to spring 2012) stop-overs:

- Hawaï, USA, September 18th, 2011
- San Diego, USA, October 26th, 2011
- Panama, December 22nd, 2011
- Gulf of Mexico, USA, January 20th, 2012
- New York, USA, 2012, February 4th, 2012
- The Bermudas, 2012, February 22nd, 2012
- Lorient, France, March 31st, 2012