Scientists to scour African waters to gauge ocean pollution

Scientists on Saturday began a five-month mission to study how plastic pollution in Africa's main rivers and climate change stresses are affecting organisms in the Atlantic ocean.

The Tara research ship arrived in South Africa's Cape Town on Friday and is being used for the survey.

The researchers will look at how pollution is affecting the Atlantic in major African rivers.

They will look at the sources of plastic pollution at the river mouths.

The research station will cast nets that can go up to 1,000 meters below the ocean's surface to collect samples from the Microbiomes that are found in the ocean. Key questions about the world's oceans will be answered by the data gathered.

The researchers will look at the Benguela Current, which goes up from South Africa to the coast of Africa.

It pulls up cold water from the ocean depths in a process known as upwelling.

Emma Rocke, a research fellow at the University of Cape Town who is working on the vessel, told Agence France-Presse that there is more nutrition here than anywhere else in the world.

It is not included in climate change models because it hasn't been done before.

She said that without the microbiome, ocean life would not exist.

Marine biologists will study an upwelling current off the Senegalese coast, which is the third most powerful in the world.

42 research institutions around the world are involved in the 12th global mission of the Tara vessel.

Romain Trouble, executive director of the Tara Ocean Foundation, said that this is the first time the ship has traveled through the West African coast.

There is very little data on this kind of Microbiome in this environment.

The effect of agriculture and plastic pollution from African rivers will be studied by a University of Pretoria professor.

Makhalanyane said they expect to see evidence of a high degree of pollution in coastal communities.

The vessel left Lorient in France in December of 2020 to embark on a 70,000-kilometer journey. Since then, it has traveled to the coast of Brazil, Argentina, and the Weddell Sea.

There will be a new year in 2022.

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