French Embassy Hosts Bougainville Plankton Mission Conference in Seychelles
VICTORIA, Seychelles — Environmental marine enthusiasts were at the Docklands Auditorium yesterday afternoon to learn about the study of plankton through a first conference of the Bougainville mission, a project aimed at studying the oceans’ invisible biodiversity on a global scale. The project was launched by the Station biologique de Roscoff, a French marine biology and oceanography research and training centre.
The conference was organised by the French embassy in Seychelles in collaboration with the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) in partnership with the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles and other local partners. The project, named after the famous 18th-century French naval expedition led by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, brings together researchers from the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the Atlantic to collect and compare plankton samples, with the aim of mapping the global distribution of these microscopic organisms that form the base of the marine food chain.
Discussions at the conference highlighted the importance of plankton in regulating the climate, producing oxygen and supporting fisheries, and noted that climate change, ocean acidification and pollution are altering plankton populations in ways that are still not fully understood. The Seychelles leg of the mission will see researchers collect samples around Mahé and the inner islands over the coming weeks, and the data will feed into a global open-access database. The conference forms part of broader French-Seychellois scientific cooperation, which has grown steadily over the past decade through partnerships between IRD, the University of Seychelles, and the Seychelles Climate Change Adaptation Trust.
