The Malaspina 2010 expedition will leave from Cadiz this November on an interdisciplinary project led by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) and which aims to evaluate the impact of global change in the oceans and study their biodiversity. In total more than 250 researchers from 19 Spanish bodies —AZTI-Tecnalia included— will participate in the project. This figure rises to almost 400 when students and researchers from the 16 associated foreign institutions are included and amongst which are NASA, the European Space Agency and the Universities of California, Río de Janeiro, Washington and Vienna.

Over a period of nine months the oceanographic research vessels Hespérides and Sarmiento de Gamboa will between them sail more than 42,000 nautical miles, the greatest part corresponding to the Hespérides, on a route that takes it from Cadiz and takes in Río de Janeiro, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, Cape Town, Perth, Sydney, Honolulu, Panama, Cartagena de Indies, Cartagena in Spain and back to Cadiz. The Sarmiento de Gamboa will sail out of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to Miami. At each port of call events and conferences have been organised to provide information on the consequences of global change, the importance of marine research and the Malaspina expedition.

70,000 samples to be gathered

The research teams will carry out trials at 350 points and gather some 70,000 samples from the air, water and plankton from the surface to a depth of 5,000 metres. The aim is to draw up a multidisciplinary study made up of 11 thematic blocks, in order to evaluate the impact of global change and the biodiversity of the oceans. The temperature, salinity and concentration of nutrients in different oceanic areas will be measured and the interchange of gases between the ocean and the atmosphere and the CO₂ absorbed by the sea will be studied, as well as the influence of chemical substance on the ocean and their possible toxicity. The diversity of the metabolism of the phytoplankton, zooplankton and deep-sea micro-organisms will also be studied.

All the samples gathered will form part of the Malaspina 2010 Collection, which will also include information and images of the progress of the expedition and will be sealed —like a time capsule— for decades to come, awaiting new scientific developments and which will enable subsequent generations to have ample material for research and around which new techniques can be developed.

Six million euros

The expedition, a 2010 Consolider-Ingenio one and financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, is made up of 27 research teams from the CSIC, from the Spanish Oceanographic Institute and 16 universities, a museum, a public research foundation and the Spanish Navy. Total funding, in which the CSIC, the Spanish Navy and the BBVA Bank Foundation have collaborated, comes to about six million euros.

For more information: www.expedicionmalaspina.es/

Comparte este contenido: