BIOcean5D

Colomban de Vargas presents the BIOcean5D project at the ESA (European Space Agency)

Marine biodiversity supports ecosystem services that are fundamental to our very existence, whether it’s protecting coastlines from rising sea levels and increasing storm surges, or discovering new molecules for medical innovations.

Recent studies of marine ecosystems have highlighted our lack of understanding of the richness and functioning of marine life, which, due to human activity, is evolving at a faster rate than ever in Earth’s history.

BIOcean5D brings together major European centers in molecular/cellular biology (EMBL), marine biology (EMBRC), and sequencing (Genoscope), along with 26 partners from 11 countries, to build a unique set of technologies, protocols, and models for a holistic re-exploration of marine biodiversity, from viruses to mammals, from genomes to holobionts, at multiple spatial and temporal scales, from the pre-industrial era to the present day.

The goal of BIOcean5D is to improve our understanding of pan-European biodiversity along land-sea gradients and the ecosystem services generated by this biodiversity, including marine exposomes. The TREC expedition (2023-2024) is a key element of this work, deploying mobile laboratories and research vessels, including the Tara schooner, and developing innovative citizen science tools through 21 coastal zones and 35 marine laboratories from the Mediterranean to the Arctic.

New data will be harmonized with existing data within an open-access data center, allowing international infrastructures to be optimized and generating transformative marine biodiversity knowledge across technologies and scales.

The knowledge will allow us to formulate and constrain:

• new theories and models of marine biodiversity, ecological and evolutionary, at both the taxonomic and functional scales;
• a portfolio of new holistic indicators of marine ecosystem health;
• innovative methods and protocols for the economic and legal assessment of biodiversity and marine services, integrating the dynamic and functional complexity of marine life.

BIOcean5D will create a unique opportunity to bridge molecular/subcellular biology and organismal biology, theoretical ecology and econometrics, as well as complex marine systems and social sciences, in order to achieve our common goal of protecting our oceans and seas.