Tara expedition


The Tara expedition is an oceanic research expedition.

The boat

Tara is a 36-metre aluminum-hulled schooner, formerly named Seamaster. 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. Following Blake's death, the yacht was bought by Etienne Bourgois, renamed Tara and dedicated to environmental expeditions.

Expeditions

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. Dubbed Tara Arctic, this voyage ended on February 23, 2008. It was part of the international DAMOCLES program.
In 2009, Tara started a new expedition, dubbed Tara Oceans. It travelled around the world until 2013 to study CO2 capture by marine microorganisms such as plankton. 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. 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.
Tara Mediterranean was the next expedition, followed by Tara Pacific beginning in May 2016. During this latest voyage Tara is studying coral reefs and plastic pollution.