The Hespérides ship has left Cádiz giving the starting signal to the Malaspina 2010 expedition, an interdisciplinary project led by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) to study the ocean. The chief scientist, Carlos Duarte, explained that “with this expedition we will go around the world, but also, in a certain way, to the Spanish oceanography, generating a new culture of cooperation and union of forces.”
The scientific objective of the expedition is to develop amultidisciplinary study to assess the impact of global change and deep ocean biodiversity. Thus, the temperature, salinity and concentration of nutrients in the different oceanic areas will be measured, thegas exchange between ocean and atmosphere, the fate of CO2absorbed by the sea, the influence of chemicals in the ocean and its possible toxicity. They will also study the diversity and metabolism of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and deep-sea microorganisms.
The team will conduct tests at 350 points and collect 70,000 air, water and plankton samples from the surface to 5,000 meters deep. Among the most notable milestones is the launch of19 Argo buoys that will measure ocean temperature and salinity, in cycles of 10 days, from the surface to 2000 meters deep, many of them in areas that had never been monitored. In addition, another 20 buoys will be launched, specifically designed for the project, which will measure salinity at a depth of 50 centimeters and transmit the data to the SMOS satellite; which will allow you to create thefirst satellite map of marine salinity, as part of the collaboration of the Malaspina project and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Within the project, a new oceanographic bottle has also been designed and patented that allows samples of marine plankton to be taken up to 4,000 meters deep. The bottle will be inserted into the CTD or “rosette”, the structure into which all oceanographic sample collection bottles are inserted.
Allthe collected samples will make up the Malaspina 2010 Collection, which will also include information and images on the development of the expedition and will include samples that will be sealed for decades awaiting new scientific developments, as a time capsule that will allow the following generations to have a wide range of materials to investigate and on which to develop new techniques.
Hespérides will be joined in January next year by theSarmiento de Gamboa. Between them they will accumulate about 9 months of navigation and 33,000 nautical miles (one nautical mile is equivalent to just over 1.8 kilometers). Most of this journey will correspond to the Hespérides, on a route that, from Cádiz, will stop in Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Perth, Sydney, Auckland, Honolulu, Panama and Cartagena de Indias, to end in July next year in Cartagena. For its part, the Sarmiento de Gamboa will make the crossing between Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santo Domingo. In the port stops that both ships will make during their voyage, events and conferences will be held to publicize the consequences of global change, the importance of marine research and the Malaspina expedition.
In total, more than 250 researchers from 19 Spanish institutions participate in the project, a figure that rises to almost 400 when including students and researchers from the 16 associated foreign institutions, including NASA, the European Space Agency and universities. from California, Rio de Janeiro, Washington and Vienna.
Alejandro Malaspina: from hero to traitor
The expedition, whose full name isMalaspina 2010 Circumnavigation Expedition: Global Change and Exploration of Global Ocean Biodiversity, takes its name frommarino Alejandro Malaspina (Mulazzo, 1754 – Pontremoli, 1810), a frigate captain of the Royal Spanish Navy, whose death marks 200 years in 2010.
In July 1789, Malaspina led the first Spanish circumnavigation expedition with the frigatesDiscoveredYDaring. During the five-year voyage, the researchers collected extensive data, mapped territories, recorded wildlife and explored the sea. After the expedition, Malaspina was promoted and later accused of conspiracy, for which he was imprisoned and exiled and his journey forgotten until the end of the 20th century. The project directed by the CSIC recovers, 200 years after the death of the sailor, the importance of this pioneering expedition.
