Science on board

TARA Expedition

The microscopic marine world is closely related to the water cycle and climate, which is why it is already part of global conversation. The ambitious TARA MICROBIOMES/CEODOS CHILE expedition seeks to study it in detail, and one of its managers, Doctor Camila Fernández, tells this adventure in first person.

By: Doctor Camila Fernández Ibáñez*

/ Photographies: Courtesy Foundation TARA Oceans and Camila Fernandez

*Doctor Camila Fernández Ibáñez, co-coordinator of the CEODOS Chile Mission, visiting professor at the Department of Oceanography of the Universidad de Concepción, researcher at the COPAS Sur-Austral, IDEAL and INCAR Centers, and director of the Associated International Laboratory “Multiscale Adaptive Strategies” (LIA MAST).

On October 14th, 2019, the Chilean embassy in France organized a bilateral meeting in which the organization of the new scientific expedition, of the TARA Oceans Foundation, officially began. His TARA scientific sailboat, 36 meters long, designed for polar exploration and equipped with state-of-the-art technology, would travel the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in search of the microscopic marine world. Hence the name of the expedition, “TARA MICROBIOMES”. For Chile, it was a unique opportunity to explore our coastal ocean from south to north, in a record time of three months of uninterrupted study.

That meeting in Paris was the starting point for a duo between the Universidad de Chile, represented by Alejandro Maass, and the Universidad de Concepción, represented by Camila Fernández, who writes, in order to join efforts and coordinate an unprecedented national mission along with the Chile’s main centers of excellence, working in oceanography and artificial intelligence, such as INCAR, IDEAL, COPAS SUR-AUSTRAL, CR2, INRIA, CMM, CIEP, LIAMAST, and CRG. However, four days after kicking off in Paris, the Santiago subway woke up in flames, starting what would it be the biggest social outbreak in our country in the last three decades. In February 2020, the social outbreak was followed by the report of the World Health Organization indicating that a virus in China had transformed into a pandemic that lasts until today.

Between the social outbreak and COVID-19, the organization of the TARA MICROBIOMES-CEODOS Chile expedition continued between skepticism and reluctance; How to leave port in a scientific sailing ship in quarantine? How to obtain supplies from suppliers that have been paralyzed for months? Would the crew want to cross halfway around the world in uncertain sanitary conditions? What protocols to establish during boarding and navigation? And above all… How to preserve scientific excellence among all of these difficulties and vicissitudes?

We could have canceled everything, but we accepted the challenge and arrived in April 2020 at the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation with a proposal; to launch not only an oceanographic expedition, but also a long-term coastal ocean monitoring program, a national mission called CEODOS Chile. Uniting the oceanographic community behind a single goal, CEODOS seeks to measure the current health status of the Chilean sea and monitor it from south to north every five years. CEODOS 1 would use TARA passing through our coasts.

AND WE DEPART

Sailing from Lorient in France was delayed twice. Finally, it happened in December 2020. By February 2021, when the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development began until 2030, and one year after the start of the pandemic, the TARA sailboat arrived in Punta Arenas.

We started the expedition with masks and with the uncertainty of the filming protocol and the experiments without time for tests. National security restrictions on international ships meant one scientific crew member less for the entire journey. The Navy prohibited the registration of temperature and salinity of the water in the Magallanes Region, a decision that we had to appeal to as in so many other opportunities along the way. Even so, TARA Microbiomes/CEODOS Chile started with enthusiasm, and why not to say it, a little bit of faith.

From Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt, the TARA sailboat traveled the fjords, glaciers and southern channels. After a stopover for resupply and scientific dissemination in Puerto Montt, TARA sailed to Concepción, Valparaíso and Iquique completing 34 scientific stations in just over 90 days. As coordinators, Alejandro and I followed TARA day and night from a distance.

In Concepción, third national scale, I joined as scientific chief until we arrived to Valparaíso. The first thing I felt when boarding was a great emotion to sail again and to do it on a sailboat. Then, life on board put me in front of an organic conception of science, which seeks above all to reach the other, to seek a common language by combining on board scientists, sailors, and non-traditional crew members, such as artists and writers. In such an environment, in that cultural bubble that is TARA, the human essence can be valued and be seen for what we are, not for what we do.

Science sails ahead, but the person is immediately behind. That makes us human, the curiosity of the other. The TARA Oceans Foundation has understood that and passes it on, and that will be its legacy. Thanks to my time on the TARA sailboat, the passage of this expedition and CEODOS Chile for my professional life, I have learned to see my role as a scientist as something integral. We not only generate data and wait for the world to understand it; being a contribution to knowledge is much more than that. It is a human experience. In these months we have remotely reached more than 2,500 students from Chile and the world, and we were able to see what our country is like from the sea from south to north. The adverse circumstances did nothing but exacerbate what is essential in our profession, which is to discover in order to learn and to learn in order to serve.

The expedition has already left Chile. It is now heading to the Atlantic, specifically Brazil and South Africa for another year and a half, passing through Antarctica in the summer of 2022. Our national mission still persists; the Antarctic stage awaits us at the beginning of 2022 and we will have to work for a second CEODOS mission in four more years. So, this is not the end of the exploration of the microbiome in Chile. No, it is just the beginning

For more information, please contact:

camilafernandez@oceanografía.udec.cl