Floating lab returns after two-and-a-half years

A floating lab has returned to the port of Lorient after two-and-a-half years at sea tracking invisible marine micro-organisms.

The Tara Oceans project set off 938 days ago with a remit of creating a database of these complex, yet little-known ecosystems. Based on a strange looking yacht with an aluminium hull, the lab equipment has covered some 115,000km of oceans across the world.

Eric Karsenti, the expedition's senior scientist and a researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany said: "When it started, we did have some doubts, particularly regarding funding.

"When the Tara left Lorient in 2009 we weren't entirely sure we had enough money to complete the expedition."

However, the researchers have been able to draw upon public and private funds to raise some €9 million (£7.5 million). This funding has allowed researchers from various different institutes to combine and collect information, which will eventually lead to a large database of previously unknown research.

Even though marine micro-organisms account for 98 per cent of the oceans' biomass, scientists have only studied a tiny part of this population. The yacht is set to go out to the seas once again in 2013 to explore the Arctic Ocean, which is the only part of the sea that Tara Oceans did not sample.

Posted by Joseph Hutton