Americas Cup Sustainability News : Sir Peters Blakes Old Vessel arrives in San diego .

Research Vessel Arrives In San Diego

SAN DIEGO -- Area civic leaders welcomed to San Diego Thursday the crew of a research vessel on a three-year global expedition to study biodiversity in the oceans.
The 118-foot schooner with the Tara Oceans Expedition will remain in San Diego for three weeks to undergo repairs to its sails and replace one of its two engines. Scientists aboard the vessel will also spend time with colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

"San Diego cares deeply for the health of the ocean and San Diegans understand more than people in most other cities the role a healthy ocean can play in the environment," Mayor Jerry Sanders said.

Scott Peters, chairman of the Port Commission, issued the crew a proclamation.
The Tara, once owned by the late yachtsman Sir Peter Blake -- who won the America's Cup in 1995 in San Diego -- has been at sea since 2009 collecting data about the world's oceans and marine life.
Chief scientist Eric Karsenti said researchers have been collecting organisms and sending them to land to have their genomes mapped, and 70 percent of what they find are not included in their DNA database, a sign of the rich biological diversity in the oceans.

Researchers are also on a quest to find out what effect climate change is having on plankton.
"Plankton may be the base of the food chain, but they affect everything on top of them, and produce as much as 50 percent of the air we breathe," said Dr. Chris Bowler, one of the researchers on the Tara Oceans.
The crew has collected plankton samples from all over the world and about every month or so ships the samples back to labs in France.
The expedition, which is sponsored in part by the French National Center for Scientific Research, has a goal to map the various changes plankton are facing in the world's oceans which are being affected by climate change.

"One disturbing thing we found which we did not expect to find was plastic particles in the Antarctic. It's so far from human intervention and yet we're finding plastic particles there," Bowler said.
Tara scientists plan to use their time to promote future collaboration with Scripps Oceanography, Karsenti said.
They also will make presentations in local schools before departing Nov. 23 for Panama.
After their Panama stop, the ship will head for New York and then across the Atlantic Ocean to France in March 2012.
Tara oceans Blog . http://oceans-taraexpeditions-es.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html