Science cover is all about Tara: 50% of oxygen comes from the sea

In 76,000 miles traveled by sea Tara revolutionized the conception of marine biology. It is not only us who say this, recognizing the incredible work done by the schooner that was Peter Blake‘s, is the influential journal “Science” from whose pages we quote the comment of editor Marcia McNutt: “Not only do the oceans provide us with half of the oxygen we breathe. They also absorb 90 percent of the heat caused by greenhouse gases and a quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels. Tiny sea creatures outnumber the stars in the universe and are the foundation of all food chains in the sea. They produce and consume half of the organic material generated on earth. Tara, which is a bit of a modern-day Darwin’s Beagle, revolutionized marine biology between 2009 and 2013 by arriving at the following results through the work of 500 scientists from 40 different nations, large private funders and a base in Laurient:

– 50 percent of oxygen, or half of the oxygen on the entire planet is produced by marine plankton (found in surface waters reached by sunlight) through chlorophyll photosynthesis. Oceans are for all intents and purposes the earth’s second largest lung, along with forests.

– The DNA of the sea: 35,000 plankton species collected, from 0.02 micrometers (thousandths of a millimeter) to a few millimeters in size. In one liter of water live 200 billion specimens of viruses and 20 billion specimens of bacteria.

– 40 million unknown genes discovered in the tiny organisms collected: to give a yardstick, humans have 20,000 genes, 73 percent of which are the same as those in the plankton collected during the expedition. A little bit of the sea then, lives in each of us.

– Temperature determines which species are present in a given area. Warming seas, in light of the climate change we are experiencing, not only affect the routes of larger fish, but also undermine the base of the food chain formed by plankton.