Biotherm is racing with purpose

Biotherm IMOCA Research Project

The skincare brand is joining forces with the Tara Ocean Foundation to study ocean biodiversity as the racing team takes on The Ocean Race in 2023 through an experimental research project integrated into the Biotherm IMOCA.

Biotherm announced a joint research project with the Tara Ocean Foundation to study ocean biodiversity as the racing team takes on The Ocean Race in 2023. Each leg of the race will become a data collection opportunity as experimental sensors onboard the Biotherm IMOCA will capture key information about phytoplankton and the health of our ocean.

Phytoplankton support all life in the ocean and play an important role in the ocean’s ability to capture carbon and regulate Earth’s climate, which is why this research is so crucial. The Biotherm IMOCA will collect data on phytoplankton in compliment to Tara Ocean Foundation by traveling in places that the research vessel cannot, notably during the race’s historic Southern Ocean leg during the 2022/2023 edition.

To achieve this challenging mission, scientific partners of the Tara Ocean Foundation and sailors from the Biotherm Racing team are installing a novel state-of-theart automated microscope aboard the Biotherm IMOCA: an Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB). The device combines flow cytometry and video technology to capture high resolution images of microscopic particles such as phytoplankton in aquatic environments. In short, the Imaging FlowCytobot will behave as an automated microscope: it will take small samples of water from understudied parts of the ocean to create geolocalized datasets of microscopic marine life.

Mapping the future of ocean biodiversity research

Beyond researching local biodiversity, the data collected by Biotherm will help Tara Ocean Foundation and their research partners to devise new algorithms to study phytoplankton diversity from developing space-based satellites. In the future, these developing research methods will help us gain significantly more information on the properties of the marine biodiversity in the upper ocean than what is available today.