News 8 June 2023

Tara travels across Europe’s seas

In this daily World Sea Day, Tara is obviously on a mission. Since last April, the schooner left on Tara Europa. 

On April 2nd, the schooner Tara was going on yet another mission. Until September 2024, she will follow the European coasts in order to study coastal ecosystems, as well as the connexion between our earth and the sea. Throughout this mission Tara Europa, she will stop through a dozen countries, including France, in order to bring attention to a larger audience to the crucial task of preserving oceans. 

Serving the Ocean since 2003

‘Tara, it’s a story created by a trouble Agnès and her son Étienne Bourgeois almost twenty years ago, which has become a beacon for similar projects throughout the world,’ underlines, impressed, Romain Troublé. In 2003, Agnès et Etienne, both passionate about the ocean, purchase the schooner Tara, who before them belonged to the explorer Jean-Louis Etienne then skipper Sir Peter Blake, already focusing on ecological issues. Since the very beginning, Agnès et Etienne want to make it a floating laboratory to the service of marine environment. 

Since then, the schooner has achieved 12 expeditions, in the Arctic, in the Mediterranean, or on European rivers. She sailed more than 400,000 kilometres and stopped in more than 60 countries. Its various missions, led in collaboration with high end laboratories (such as the CNRS) led to important scientific discoveries and were the subjects of numerous publication in first tier scientific journals.

In 2016 is created the Fondation Tara Ocean, the first of its kind to be recognised as public utility. Agnès and Etienne give away the schooner to the foundation, of which they are founding members. The fund now called ‘Agnès Troublé dit angès b’ is one of its key bank rollers. Etienne Bourgeois, for himself, is now the president of the foundation. It intervenes not only on the sea but also to raise awareness to a younger audience to the various challenges our ocean face, as well as advocating for the preservation of oceans and their biodiversity. Otherwise, the schooner welcomes aboard working artists, and supports various artistic projects cantered around the Ocean. 

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Camille Dorival

Support the Foundation Tara Ocean !

You can support the foundation Tara and its action in protecting the oceans by submitting a donation online or when you drop by an agnès b. Shop.