Curiosity microscopes were distributed to local partners at key locations along the TREC – @fondationtaraocean.bsky.social @taraoceans-science.bsky.social expedition route. These microscopes will facilitate, support and expand existing outreach activities for local coastal communities.

With @embl.org @ifremer.bsky.social

“TREC has been one of the best experiences of my life," he added. "Working closely with colleagues from EMBL and other partners, sharing responsibility, facing challenges together, all created strong bonds. It’s those human connections I made during TREC that I’ll remember most."

“What makes TREC unique is that we’re not studying one compartment in isolation. By linking data from water, sediment, and land, we can explore how these systems interact,” said Raffaele in the interview.

During the TREC expedition, scientists collected two types of sediment samples: surface sediments, which give insights into present-day conditions, and deeper paleocores – long cylinders of sediment that record environmental changes going back decades or even centuries.

One of the memories of TREC Raffaele recalls is an early sketch he did with Paola Bertucci, TREC’s Head of EMBL Scientific Expeditions, that turned out to be a first draft of TREC’s sampling strategy: “It marked the concrete beginning of our pan-compartment TREC sampling strategy” he said.

Some answers lie in ocean water, but because it changes rapidly with tides and currents, and plankton records rarely go back more than a few decades, studying the water alone doesn’t provide the full picture. That’s where sediments – and the sediment compartment – come in.

In our interview, Raffaele points out that few stretches of Europe’s coastline remain untouched by human activity – but in many cases, we don’t actually know what these ecosystems were like before those impacts began

Raffaele is a marine ecologist whose research focuses on coastal environmental genomics and harmful algal blooms. He is based at the French Institute for Ocean Science @ifremer.bsky.social in Brest, France