Andrew Hudson (UN Oceans), Dr. Eric Karsenti, agnès b, Philippe Kridelka (UNESCO/IOC), press conference, United Nations./L.Bourgois

It was with this race against the clock in mind that the Tara Oceans, a 118-foot aluminum schooner, set sail from Lorient, France in September 2009 to conduct the first attempt at producing a global study of marine plankton. For nearly three years, under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, the crew onboard has journeyed across 70,000 miles, taking samples from the waters adjacent to six continents in order to examine the structures of microorganisms and their ecosystems. Now, after a recent visit to New York, where the researchers shared their concerns with the UN Secretary-General, and after one final stop in Bermuda, the boat will journey back across the Atlantic to the point of its original departure, completing at least for now the groundwork – groundwork at sea no less – for a decade’s worth of laboratory analysis.
     Dr. Eric Karsenti, a molecular biologist who has served as chief scientist onboard the Oceans, tells PLANET that while it will be some time before the data collected will be fully examined and understood, the ship’s scientists have already been able to detect that plastic particles have become ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans, including the Antarctic. (Every sample taken from the Antarctic contained between 956 and 42,826 pieces of plastic per kilometer squared.) At a press conference at the UN, Karsenti explained that by using such information to broaden the foundation of knowledge in biogeography, which he described as an essentially virgin field, predictions can be made about how the ocean’s smallest life forms might respond to human-derived modifications to the ecosystem, including those tied to climate change.
     The Tara Oceans’ crewmembers have the use of advanced equipment as they crisscross the globe. To obtain their samples, they submerge an underwater vision profiler, equipped with a recognition software that