From 2009 to 2013, the research schooner Tara traversed the globe, carrying a multinational team of scientists. They surveyed the critical foundation of the marine food chain (a foundation we know dangerously little about): plankton, bacteria, protists, viruses and small animals. All in all, they found more 35,000 different kinds of organisms — many of them previously unknown to science. Read all about it!
Top photo: Tara in the Arctic Ocean (A.Deniaud/Tara Expéditions)
Photo 2: Plankton collected in the Pacific Ocean. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Tara Expéditions)
Photo 3: A male Sapphirina copepod collected in the Mediterranean sea. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Sharif Mirshak/Parafilms/Tara Expéditions)
Photo 4: A tiny
crustacean copepod, a spider crab larva, an amphipod, a baby squid, a Phronima amphipod, and
an Atlantic pteropod mollusc. (Christian Sardet/CNRS/Tara Expéditions)
Photo 5: A small medusa (a relative of the jellyfish) collected in the Mediterranean sea. (bepoles/Tara Expéditions)
Map of the voyage, based on a graphic by bepoles/Tara Expéditions.
