This Alliance unites BIOcean5D (Horizon Europe) and HyperBOOST (ESA) aboard the Tara schooner, turning a single in-situ voyage, the Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) campaign into a groundbreaking coastal research expedition.
Between April 2023 and June 2024, the alliance transformed the vessel conducted by EMBL (the European Molecular Biology Laboratory) into a multi-purpose floating laboratory, merging biological, geochemical and optical oceanography to prepare new insights into Europe’s coastal ecosystems.
HyperBOOST has installed state-of-the-art sensor optical sensor to complement Tara’s onboard wet laboratory to sample 120+ sites, from the Baltics to the Mediterranean, creating a unique dataset that bridges marine coastal biodiversity and satellite observations.
This smart, coordinated approach maximized public investment, avoided duplication, and delivered science greater than the sum of its parts:
- For BIOcean5D, optical data enriched biodiversity analyses, enabling science to better link biological patterns to environmental drivers.
- For HyperBOOST, the unique hyperspectral bio-optical characterization of European regional seas, delivers vital validation data for optically complex waters for Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, EBMAP, PRISMA and other satellite missions
- For the global community, a robust, open-access dataset spanning Europe’s biogeochemical and optical coastal diversity, essential for monitoring climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.
The alliance’s success paves the way for Plank2Space, a new ESA project using citizen science to correlate plankton DNA with satellite data worldwide. It also sets a blueprint for future integrated endeavors, like Horizon Europe’s 2027 biodiversity observation initiatives, providing that connected science, through shared platforms, interoperable data and strategic funding, can revolutionize how we study and protect our oceans.