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104 | INSPIRE YOUTH

TEAM MALIZIA
Tell me about

climate change

Skipper Boris Herrmann has the ocean in his DNA. Accompanied by the

Team Malizia, he led an event for school children from the Principality of
© Marie Lefloch I Team Malizia Monaco, attended online by a school in Lyon, to raise awareness about the

impact of climate change.

If there wasn’t any CO on Earth, what would the oceanography researcher at the Alfred Wegener
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average temperature of the planet be? Minus 80°C! Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany,
And what happens if there is too much CO ? On with a smile on her face. The young scientist worked
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Friday 22 March 2024, in the conference room at the on the data collected in remote seas by Team Malizia
Oceanographic Museum, 170 primary and secondary with one goal in mind: to understand the impact of
school students were introduced to the inner carbon dioxide emissions on the largest ecosystem in
workings of the ocean’s climate machine, guided by the world. Their story of sporting endeavour combined
two friends linked by the sea: Hermann, the skipper with ocean exploration and scientific research
of the Malizia-Seaexplorer, a participant in the Vendée captivated the young audience that had been invited
Globe, and Pierre Casiraghi, founder of Team Malizia to take part in the Monaco Ocean Week event in
and Vice-President of Monaco Yacht Club. the context of Team Malizia’s My Ocean Challenge
initiative, an educational programme supported by
the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the
IDENTIFYING AND LOCATING CO 2 Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of
UNESCO.
There is nothing like sailing the world’s seas for
studying and understanding the ocean. It is a way of
being part of Monaco’s marine history, Pierre Casiraghi
told the children at the start of his talk. When they PROFILE
sailed around the world in The Ocean Race and when
Boris Herrmann raced in the Vendée Globe in 2020,
the team brought back valuable ocean data thanks The onboard laboratory used by Boris Herrmann
to the IMOCA’s onboard laboratory. Installed on and his Team Malizia measures valuable ocean CO ,
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Team Malizia’s boat since 2018, this innovative piece temperature and salinity data in partnership with
of equipment collects data in remote and hostile the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Helmholtz
areas, where oceanographic vessels do not normally Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) and French
venture. “In May, in a region of the North Atlantic Institute for Ocean Science (IFREMER). The data is used
where there are strong winds, we measured a much by scientists all over the world to grow understanding
higher concentration of CO in the ocean than we of the ocean’s role in climate change. During the 2020-
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usually do. And that’s when it gets interesting – when 2021 Vendée Globe, the Malizia-Seaexplorer collected
we don’t understand something,” said Léa Olivier, the first full round-the-world tour’s worth of ocean CO
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data ever recorded.