REPORTAGE – Driven by the circumpolar current like a satellite around Antarctica, this oceanographic platform will be launched at the end of 2023 for two world tours in the Southern Ocean until 2026. Objective: unlock the secrets of this essential ecosystem for the climate .
To christen his new supply ship, a schooner intended to serve as a link between the inhabited oceanographic platform Polar Pod and the rest of the world, Jean-Louis Étienne could not find better than Perseverance. A name reminiscent of large exploration vessels, such as theEndurance of Sir Ernest Shackleton or theEndeavour (l’Effort) by James Cook, and highlights, not without a certain irony, all the stubbornness that the doctor and tireless French explorer, now 76 years old, had to show to succeed in achieving against all odds one of his biggest dreams.
Because the adventure had started badly. On November 29, 2012 in Brest, when he presented during a press conference his next expedition, a year of exploration in the heart of the Southern Ocean aboard Polar Pod, a « new kind of ship » especially well suited for scientific research and sailing in the big swell of the ocean, everything seems perfect. Before…
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