Over the past decades, the proliferation of plastics has rapidly become a global problem affecting all oceans. With 80% of plastics in the sea originating from land, this pollution highlights the interactions between our daily lives and the ocean, and reinforces the need for a transition to an economy that is more respectful of the planet. During the Tara Mediterranean expedition in 2014, the schooner crisscrossed the Mare nostrum to study the interaction of plastics with plankton, and biodiversity in general. First edifying observation: of the 2000 samples taken during the expedition from 350 different sites, all contained plastic fragments.

For two consecutive years (2023-2024), the schooner Tara is participating in the study of coastal ecosystems all along the European coast. The sampling of Tara Europa is part of the TREC expedition Traversing European Coastlines, led by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in collaboration with the Tara OceanS consortium, the Tara Ocean Foundation and more than 70 scientific institutions. Its objective is to study the land-sea interface, where biodiversity meets numerous pollutions.

For two consecutive years (2023-2024), the schooner Tara is participating in the study of coastal ecosystems all along the European coast. The sampling of Tara Europa is part of the TREC expedition Traversing European Coastlines, led by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in collaboration with the Tara OceanS consortium, the Tara Ocean Foundation and more than 70 scientific institutions. Its objective is to study the land-sea interface, where biodiversity meets numerous pollutions.

The Tara Oceans expedition, a 2.5-year long and 57,000 mile long trajectory, was conceived to provide a snapshot of the distribution of planktonic organisms in the world ocean, providing 'A global-scale study of morphological, genetic, and functional biodiversity of plankton organisms in relation to the changing physico-chemical parameters of the oceans' (Karsenti et al., 2011). The expedition took place from September 2009 to March 2012, spanned the majority of the world's oceans, and included, besides a large array of biological sampling, hydrographic measurements, optical measurements of surface hyper-spectral particulate absorption and attenuation, hyper-spectral reflectance and HPLC pigments.E. Karsenti, S.G. Acinas, P. Bork, C. Bowler, C. De Vargas, J. Raes, and 22 co-authors, A holistic approach to marine eco-systems biology, PLoS Biol. 9, e1001177, (2011), doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001177.

Tara microbiome is the latest Tara expedition focused on plankton. The Microbiome Mission will help us understand the services provided by this essential ecosystem of the Ocean, its microbiome, an increasingly crucial challenge for scientific research and is done in conjunction with the AtlantECO program where additional ships will collect similar variables.