To harness the curiosity and creativity of sailors and scientists to sample ocean plankton at unprecedented scales, for in depth evaluation of ocean health, biodiversity, & evolution.
LATEST NEWS
Ongoing development
We are working on a High-speed Net and a completely new modular and low-cost miscroscope, the PlanktoScope, for quantitative live imaging by citizen sailors.
Plankton Art
We put exceptional plankton images and moovies/3D-prints in the hands of children and artists, stimulating an emotional and intuitive interpretation/representation of the invisible world that drives the ecological cycles of our planet.
TESTIMONIALS
"… a wonderful project, bridging new scientific methods, innovative approach based on citizen sailors, and passion for the sea; and all of this to understand the behavior of the largest part of the marine biosphere."
Scientific Advisor, Institute of Ecology and Environment (INEE)
"The method proposed is simple well thought through and feasible. Although the data collected are simple, both in terms of biology and physics, they are well chosen and represent key parameters for theoreticians."
Academician at the Academy of Sciences
"For the yachting community, data collection, supervised by scientists and with easy protocols, constitutes an outstanding opportunity to enrich a voyage. Such an exercise is fun, incites the sailor to view the ocean under a different light and to better understand the nature of the water that flows under the hull, not to mention the pride of contributing to a major effort of ocean exploration."
Sailor
"We are at a surprising stage in oceanography where we have models and theories which can predict patterns of the biodiversity and functionality in the plankton for which we do not have suitable, basin or global scale data sets to test them. The prospect of large-scale molecular characterizations of the diversity, and taxonomic and functional biogeography of the plankton, will be truly game-changing"
Professor at MIT
"It is the first time that I’ve heard of a project so simple and so efficient to quickly deepen and enlarge the knowledge we desperately need to better understand the fascinating world of plankton. Our future will lay in our capacity to imagine together new goals and new actions. This project is a perfect step in that direction and I fully support it."
Sailor
"I strongly recommend Plancton Planet project as a low-cost means to collect critical, standardized genetic data from a large variety of oceanic biogeochemical provinces. Thousands of sailing boats are crossing the oceans at any given time. Involving them in plankton sampling may well be the only way to scale up our prediction of plankton biodiversity changes to the level reached in terrestrial systems."
Oceanographer at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey
"Plankton Planet leaders are extremely creative in their respective and complementary fields. They coordinated the circum-global expeditions Tara-Oceans and Tara-Oceans Polar Circle over the last 5 years and have thus developed powerful, innovative, and validated DNA-based and environmental sensors that can be used by regular sailors."
Windsurfer
"I was amazed by the contrast between the easiness of the sampling protocol at sea and the power of the massive DNA data generated later in their laboratory. Overall, their approach has the potential to measure the ‘health’ of oceanic waters worldwide and constantly, which beyond the scientific interest is a great endeavor for the future of humankind."
Sailor & CEO Fond Explore
"I was immediately caught by this great, simple idea and offered to be an ambassador of this new exciting project. Tara must pursue her mission as ambassador of the world’s oceans and citizens, and her main role is to catalyze desire to better understand our blue plane."
CEO Agnes b.