“Tara” takes the green sailboat sail the Pacific on track corals – The World

After part in catching plankton between 2009 and 2013, the famous schooner takes the path of the oceans. On May 28, the sailboat Tara will leave its home port of Lorient for a new expedition in Asia Pacific. For two years, the schooner, with 70 scientists on board, should travel nearly 100,000 km, visiting 30 countries, analyzing 40 islands and collect over 40 000 samples. The goal, comprise one of the largest marine biodiversities: coral, threatened by climate change, ocean acidification and human presence

with their bright colors and strange shapes, corals are real underwater treasures. If they only cover less than 0.2% of the ocean surface, they are home to nearly 30% of marine biodiversity. “With them, we can understand the evolution of life, these are health markers. They protect the island countries of the storms and are also an important source of tourism, “ recalls Romain Troubled, secretary general of Tara Expeditions, a nonprofit organization.

20% of reefs are already destroyed

Regularly confronting natural threats, such as “white band disease,” the corals disappear for several years. But the human footprint is also a factor. “We know that global warming contributes to bleaching corals. But urbanization is also an important threat to overfishing and pollution, “ explains Romain Disturbed. Twenty percent of reefs are already destroyed, 15% are damaged and may disappear within ten years and 20% by additional forty. Their health and the health of millions of bacteria around them is however crucial. As the rainforest, reefs supply many other animals: fish, sponges, sea snakes

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for two years, with six people aboard, Tara Pacific will then sail the oceans in search of corals to study. Panama Canal to the archipelago of Japan (2016-2017) and New Zealand to China (2017-2018), the schooner will cross 11 time zones across the ocean the largest in the world, joining particularly island and land the most remote reefs of the world. “This is the first time we also have a global vision of the reefs, as we will pick those most distant and unknown” says Serge Planes, CNRS researcher and chief scientist of the expedition.

What resilience to coral

One of the major objectives of the shipping is to understand adaptation, “resilience” of corals to climate or human stress. “We will extract the pieces by probes, coring techniques, and analyze in detail this ecosystem,” says Romain Disturbed. Because the coral is not simple to grasp: several thousand species exist, some as young as 4,000 years

The idea of ​​studying this ecosystem is coming in the previous expedition. Tara Oceans. “For four years we have worked on plankton, we found different coral reefs between 2009 and 2012, and they were pretty good. Pacific Tara was born from this project, because we wanted to see how others were coral reefs, “ says Romain Disturbed. Tara Pacific is the 11 ^th scientific expedition led by the organization.