Next November theMalaspina expedition 2010, an interdisciplinary project led by the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) that aims toassess the impact of global change on the ocean and study its biodiversity. The expedition takes its name from the sailorAlejandro Malaspina, who at the end of the 18th century led the first scientific expedition of Spanish circumnavigation and whose death marks 200 years in 2010.
For nine months, theoceanographic research vessels Hesperides and Sarmiento de Gamboabetween them they will travel more than 42,000 nautical miles of navigation. Most of it will correspond to the Hespérides, on a route that, from Cádiz, will stop at Rio de Janeiro, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, Cape Town, Perth, Sydney, Honolulu, Panama, Cartagena de Indias, Cartagena and Cádiz. For its part, the Sarmiento de Gamboa will carry out a route from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to Miami. At each stop, events and conferences will be held to publicize the consequences of global change, the importance of marine research and the Malaspina expedition. 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.
? With this expeditionwe are going to go around the world, but also, in a way, to Spanish oceanography, generating a new culture of cooperation and union of forces. It is an ambitious project, with a global dimension, that meets two important needs: to assess the impact of global change on the ocean and to explore that still so unknown ecosystem that is the deep ocean ?, has highlighted CSIC researcher Carlos Duarte.
