Tara vessel in Cape Town to study Benguela current, river polution
AFTER a 10-day stopover in Cape Town, the sailing vessel Tara will carry out a demanding study of the Benguela current that flows up the coasts of Namibia and Angola.
The Tara Ocean Foundation and the international program, AtlantECO’s Microbiomes Mission are on board the schooner.
Tara is also set to study plastic pollution in the main African rivers.
The Tara left its home port of Lorient in France in December 2020 for a two-year mission and will arrive in Cape Town on Friday.
Since its departure, it has travelled the coasts of Chile, Brazil and Argentina, as well as the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, to discover the invisible inhabitants of the ocean: the Microbiome.
During a visit to the vessel on Saturday, lead scientist of the South African and Namibian leg Emma Rocke said the project was studying how microbiomes adapt to the ocean.
Rocke said marine microorganisms play an essential role in the ocean and are the first link in an immense food web that feeds a large part of humanity.
They regulate the earth’s temperature and play a key role in the nutrition of ecosystems.
The functioning of this invisible world is still largely unknown.
The third part of the Tara’s scientific mission will focus on the study of the West African coast.
During this last stage, the schooner will stop in seven countries: South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Gambia and Senegal.
The scientific team, led by Prof Thulani Makhalanyane of the University of Pretoria will look at plastic pollution in the main African rivers and study its impact on the South Atlantic Ocean.
“The ocean is the lungs of the earth, how much of those lungs are affected by human activity and climate change is the point of this project – to characterise that as much as we can.
“Everything is interconnected like a spider’s web, bacteria, viruses and what we as humans do, affects the web.
“A lot of these bacteria are capable of generating greenhouse gases, so we need to know how many of those are there and are they making a positive or negative impact on the ocean? ” said Rocke.