Programme of Events
Remote Coral Reefs – Tara Oceans
The National Maritime Museum of Ireland
July 10th to August 31st
Plus public holidays
For more info check out
On 31st of March 2012, the schooner Tara, equipped with new technology for sampling the entire plankton communities from viruses to animals, and benthic diversity in coral reef ecosystems came back to her home port, Lorient, France. After 115 000kms, ~27,800 biological samples, 100 scientists, 50 countries crossed in 2 ½ years.
The Kahi Kai team has the privilege to be involved in the development of the imaging platform of the Tara Oceans Expedition. They went from Libya to Croatia, Djibouti, Saint Brandon, from Ascension (Great Britain) and Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) and finally a trip around the Gambier Islands.
This exhibition will present pictures taken during the two major remote coral reef surveys as part of the Tara Oceans Expedition: Saint Brandon and Gambiers
Saint Brandon (Republic of Mauritius), an island nation off the coast of the African continent in the Indian Ocean, about 900 kilometers east of Madagascar. Aldine Amiel from Kahi Kai joined the schooner in Male and was in charge of the imaging platform onboard for the 26 days
Gambier Islands and atolls cover a small area (about 35 km²) in the south Pacific and is well known for its pearl farming. Those natural and quite isolated islands are located at the southeast end of the Tuamotu archipelago, several hundred miles south away from Tahiti Islands. In Gambier, most of the landscape was designed and shaped by volcanic activity contrary to the Tuamotu islands, which comprise several chains of coral atolls. Eric Roettinger was in charge of the imaging platform onboard, taking both macro and microscopy photos of planktonic and benthic sea creature.