Tara Pacific – San Diego to Panama – Adventures on Islands

Sep 11, 2018 • 8:13 AM UTC

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tpollina

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Leaving Tara to explore the islands close by was valuables moments.
First at Clipperton Island which is an uninhabited 6 km 2 coral atoll in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central America. It is 10,677 kilometers away from Paris , 5,400 km from Papeete, and 1,081 km from Mexico.

Clipperton has a ring-shaped atoll which completely encloses a stagnant freshwater lagoon, and is 12 km (7.5 mi) in circumference. The lagoon is devoid of fish, and contains some deep basins with depths of 43 and 72 m (141 and 236 ft), including a spot known as Trou-Sans-Fond, or “the bottomless hole”, with acidic water at its base. The water is described as being almost fresh at the surface, and highly eutrophic.
Source : wikipedia

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I didn’t know this island before but we felt lucky to be able to visit it. I invite you to read more about the history of this uninhabited island on wikipedia. The fact that some fresh water was contained by this lagoon was really curious and I took a day off with Nicolas Bin, the second onboard to lead an sampling session on it !

It seems to me that the richness wasn’t extraordinary nevertheless the density of cells was insane. We had find mostly Dinoflagellates and Copepods in it.

Several Macro-algaes were also living around the inner coast of the atoll. Not videos of it but a darkfield tentative.
Secondly we went to Coiba archipelago were I had a small folscope session on land.