Video: Plastic waste invasion on Clipperton Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the sad discovery of the Tara Pacific Expedition.
The schooner of Tara expedition travels all over the world's oceans to study and understand the marine environment and the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.
Starting in May 2016 from Lorient, her home port, the schooner Tara has just completed the largest exploration campaign ever undertaken on coral reefs.
Two and a half years of expedition have been completed, after more than 100,000 km traveled and 2,677 scientific dives completed.
The Tara expedition made a stop in the French atoll "paradisiac" of Clipperton to study the coral reef.
Clipperton Island is an uninhabited 6 km2 (2.3 sq mi) coral atoll in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central America. It is 5,400 km from Papeete, Tahiti, and 1,081 km from Mexico. It is an overseas minor territory of France, under direct authority of the Minister of Overseas France. Coordinates 10°18′N 109°13′W
Arriving on the Island’s ground, Tara’s crew has sadly noticed the situation had not improved since the discovery made by Jean-Louis Étienne's expedition in 2005.
The atoll is completely invaded by plastic wastes, discharged by the Pacific Ocean, in what should normally be a preserved ecosystem.
The birds make their nests with plastic waste when they do not ingest them.
Photos © 2018 Tara Expedition, Tara Pacific 2018
The director of the Tara expedition, Serge Planes, felt completely disillusioned with this situation.
Serge Planes : "It made me really sad, there is not one place cleaner than another. Waste is everywhere, it is an extremely sad spectacle, totally discouraging."
According to scientists at the Tara Pacific expedition, the problem of plastic pollution will not be solved by cleaning up the oceans but by adopting more responsible behaviors.
And as for the preliminary object of their study, the scientists of the expedition Tara affirms that the presence of plastic in does not help the situation of the coral reefs: "the plastic being deposited on the corals or in floating above them prevents some of the light from reaching the corals. If there really is too much, it can lead to death. We also realize that it weakens them in the event of a warming of the water, they whiten faster ".
About Tara Shipping: https://oceans.taraexpeditions.org
Tara Expeditions organizes expeditions to study and understand the impact of climate change and the ecological crisis on our oceans. French private initiative (non-profit), Tara Expeditions has been working since 2003 in favor of the environment and research thanks to a mythical boat, Tara, cut for extreme conditions. The project was born from the passion of the oceans, from a humanist and committed vision of its creators, Agnès b. and Etienne Bourgois. Tara's scientific expeditions study two main scientific themes: Ocean and climate change. They are the result of collaboration with scientific institutes and bring concrete results on these themes. Tara Expeditions also acts concretely to strengthen the environmental awareness of the general public and young people, in particular through the Tara Junior program, and encourages politicians to act on the environmental level.