361°

Tara expeditions

The challenge of the polar schooner Tara is to drift on the Arctic pack ice for two years. On her board, scientists take turns to study the effects of the climate warming.

In September 2006, the scientific polar schooner Tara began her Arctic drift which will last for two years. Indeed, her rounded and flat hull enables her to resist to the extreme pressures exerted on her by the pack ice and to be carried through by it.

Led by Etienne Bourgois, the expedition takes place within the International Polar Year (IPA) 2007-2008 and is a major partner of the European scientific programme DAMOCLES. This extensive programme gathers more than 45 laboratories to develop an observation and long term prediction system of the Arctic Ice Sea so as to evaluate and foresee the risks and impacts of climate changes on our environment.

Bringing together science, technology, education and communication, Tara Arctic is a great human adventure of which the aim is to raise the world citizens awareness on the importance of ecological equilibriums.

More +++

Tracks accross time

The battle to save a unique collection of prehistoric footprints

© Teresa Manera

An endangered window into South America's ancient past has gained a new lease on life, thanks to the pioneering efforts of an Argentinian scientist intent on preserving prehistoric animal tracks etched into a remote stretch of coastline that is under threat from rising sea levels, human destruction and developers.

Teresa Manera de Bianco, a palaeontologist and geologist who, with her husband, found the fossilised tracks in 1986 when a winter storm partly blew the sand off a three-kilometre rocky shelf, has raced against time to record the tracks before rising sea levels put them permanently beyond reach. She has also struggled to convince local residents that the tracks, laid down 12,000 years ago when the area was an inland pond teeming with birds and mammals, are worth protecting from destruction.

For her endless curiosity about the animals that produced the tracks and her dedicated quest to preserve them for study by scientists and local people alike, Manera won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2004.
More+++

Afro Peaks

Concept : trans-afro-mountains scientific expedition

A two-years, over 50,000 kilometer drive around african mountains - crossing the whole continent, through 47 countries - with the aim to climb and film African Mountains from north to south .
In memory of the pioneering Naturalists and Explorers who greatly conribute to better understand Nature , Africa or Moutains wilderness.

Thoses who inspired us , are throroughly referenced in this website . They build the spirit of our adventure : From Linné to Théodore Monod, Livingstone or Roger Frison Roche, Henry Morton Stanley, the duc of Abruzzi, in memory of Jean Rouch, Guy Vienne and others..

Our trip is going to take us trough all African countries, from Morocco to South Africa, from Senegal to Eritrea through the 47 continental African states to symbolically link all peaks according to our travelling.

We are going to participate to study projects on biology, environment conservation and mountain development in about ten selected areas. We wish to meet and help various education and environment conservation actions (water, biodiversity, ecofriendly citizenship) and promote the values of sustainable development we stand for. Beside the help we could bring through these projects, it is for us a way of understanding better the mountains, their people and the cultural diversities which characterize them. In other places, the stops will also give us the opportunity to communicate, pass these values on and make contacts wihout necessarily leading to a thorough study.

More +++