Tara Polar Station Departs Lorient for Arctic Ice Drift Mission

The Tara Polar Station left the port of Lorient on Sunday afternoon for its first expedition to the North Pole. Several hundred people gathered along the quays to watch the departure, which took place in the presence of Minister for the Sea Catherine Chabaud.

Euronews reported that the station, shaped like an igloo on an immense buoy, is designed to withstand sea ice pressure and temperatures as low as −52 °C.

Its crew aims to study the biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean and the effects of global warming in a region heating three to four times faster than the rest of the planet, where sea ice is retreating rapidly. Twelve countries, including Germany, Canada, the United States, Spain, Switzerland and Japan, are taking part in the mission.

From mid-August the station will sail along the Russian coast escorted by an icebreaker before becoming caught in pack ice at the beginning of September.

It will then drift with the ice for 350 to 500 days at an average speed of around ten kilometres a day, arriving at the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard at the end of 2027. Twelve people, including six scientists, will live aboard during winter and eighteen during summer. Crew members were selected after medical and psychological tests and attended a team-building seminar.

The overwintering team will face five months of polar night, average temperatures of −25 °C and polar bears. All have been trained in firearm use for safety on the ice, and a Lapponian herder dog will accompany them to detect approaching animals. Researchers will collect more than 10,000 samples from the water column down to 2,000 metres, the atmosphere and cavities within the sea ice.