Article Summary:

BBC Nature has published a slideshow of images from the Tara research vessel entitled “Marine Microworlds: The private life of plankton”. The pictures were collected during a two and a half year and 70,000-mile journey around the world’s oceans, during which over one million new species were discovered. By studying the plankton in the oceans, the project hope to achieve a snapshot of their state and health. Dr Chris Bowler, scientific co-ordinator of the expedition says:

“Nobody has ever done this on the scale that we have before. The task now is to understand the physical and climactic constraints that have created these ecosystems.How much is pollution affecting them, how much is temperature change affecting them? If a species of plankton sensitive to temperature migrates, it could devastate that food chain and therefore local fisheries.”