At the Ocean Race the boats sail against climate change
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The French boat of Team Europe broke her mast at the end of the second stage, thus having to give up the longest ever of the Ocean Race, which crossed the South Seas, from Cape Town to Itajaì, in Brazil. However, as long as he could, he did his part: from the keel he collected water samples without interruptions which end up in a special equipment below deck, where three progressive filters pass which retain the microplastics between 0.03 and 5 millimeters.
Growing microplastics
The results are merciless: also thanks to increased sensitivity, the microplastic particles have reached almost 1,900 per cubic metre, with peaks recorded on the South African coast, eighteen times more than five years ago. The data is all the more relevant as it is collected in areas with much less monitoring than the North Atlantic routes. So at the planet’s most remote point, Point Nemo, 2,700km from the mainland in any direction, particles have jumped to 320 per cubic meter from levels between 9 and 41 last time around. The other four boats in the Imoca category also each have their own scientific role.
Sensors to study the effects of climate change
As they fly over the water for the 62,000 km challenge of the Ocean Race, the round-the-world regatta that started in mid-January from Alicante and arrives in Genoa at the end of June, for the first time in Italy, the boats transform into sensors for the study of the effects of climate change on ocean waters: from temperature to salinity, from nitrates and sulphites to acidity up to surface CO2, the data is collected, integrated with satellite data, feeding the European project EmodNet, within the of the Unesco Global Ocean Observing System. “At speeds of up to 39 knots, about 90 km per hour, they are the fastest scientific craft in the world. But above all they manage to recover data in areas difficult to cover by traditional monitoring», explains Stefan Raimund, scientific director of the Ocean Race, underlining the value of what from an experiment launched in 2017, together with the Vendée Globe, a real tour of the sailing world, has now become a model shared by the competing teams: «Faced with a global emergency such as climate change, this model must become a shared practice of collaboration».
Collaborative science model
It is no coincidence that the slogan of this program is “Race with a purpose”, it competes with a purpose. It is a model of global citizen science that has Italian roots. Because it is Ett, a Genoese university spinoff created in 2000 and now a 250-employee company that has joined the Scai group, which takes care of data collection or, better still, guarantees availability and standardisation, making them compatible with all other data collected globally. has built diverse business models around its expertise in handling complex data. Starting from employment offices and the replacement of resignations via registered mail, the company has expanded its range of action to museum innovation and innovative presentation of contents and products, also by exploiting virtual reality technology, such as the “beauty machine ” incorporated in shop mirrors or the customization of perfume fragrances on a personalized basis.
Ett: Make global data accessible
Now this expertise in data management has also ended up in the field of environmental monitoring, a division that is worth about 10% of the 32.8 million euro turnover, a share that aims to double in two-three years. “Our mission is to make global data on the physical and chemical properties of ocean waters available and accessible – explains Antonio Novellino, head of smart cities and sustainability at Ett -. We make our expertise available to improve forecasting models and anticipate the intensity of extreme events. We do this by primarily guaranteeing interoperability and data availability, together with skills in numerical models to integrate multiple variables, exploiting computational infrastructures such as the HPC center in Bologna and developing algorithms with the ability to continuously re-elaborate scenarios”.
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