Ocean science yacht Tara departs Cape Town

by Des Ryan on 7 Sep 2010 The French-flagged 36metre superyacht, Tara, once owned by murdered New Zealand yachtsman Sir Peter Blake, has just left Cape Town as part of her three year world voyage. The Tara, a 120 ton aluminium hulled schooner, wants to find the answers to some key questions about our oceans, with concentration on ocean plankton.

'We are going to Ascension Island -- we'll be there in one month and then in Rio in the middle of October,' Captain Olivier Marien told AFP reporters shortly ahead of the yacht's departure. 'We have a busy schedule on the way so we will make several stops. Tomorrow will be the first sampling off the South African waters.'

The yacht will then sail to Argentina and further south to Antarctica, round the Horn the 'wrong way'. The crew are collecting samples which are frozen onboard and sent to laboratories every month to map out a baseline for future climate studies.

The primary task of the on-board scientists, most of them from European scientific institutions, is to catalogue some of the ocean's vast store of plankton, which includes various forms of microscopic marine life such as bacteria, viruses and fish larvae. The findings will feed into other scientific studies, thereby improving the global understanding of key issues such as climate change and pollution.

'We know now that the planet is changing, and the ocean is changing, and we expect much from the ocean to counterbalance what the humans are doing on the planet,' Philippe Koubbi, the chief scientist on board told AFP.

'We know that some of the tiny plankton are threatened ... and we know that tiny animals or these tiny plants are very very important in controlling the balance in the ocean.'

A bio-bank is being created from the research, ranging from viruses and bacteria to fish larvae, and more than 100 scientists are involved in the project. Plankton ecosystems are little known but the microorganisms absorb half of the world's carbon production and produce as much oxygen as forests.

The return to ice will be familiar territory for the 1989-built vessel -- now on its eighth scientific voyage -- which was previously named Antarctica and ended a 507-day Arctic trip in 2008.

Next year Tara will also sail via Chile, Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, the Clipperton Islands, the Marquesas Islands and Papeete, before sailing on to New Zealand. The first leg crossed the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

The sailing hasn't been without its highs and lows either. The yacht was nearly caught up in a hijacking while passing through the Arabian sea . Another vessel just 15 nautical miles away was hijacked by Somali pirates.