Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh has con­grat­u­lat­ed the team be­hind Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first sci­en­tif­ic ex­pe­di­tion to ex­plore the na­tion’s deep wa­ters, prais­ing their com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing ma­rine sci­ence and ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the coun­try’s ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh con­firmed that sci­en­tists from T&T and around the world are past the halfway mark of the jour­ney aboard Schmidt Ocean In­sti­tute’s state-of-the-art re­search ves­sel, RV Falkor.

The re­lease stat­ed: “Spe­Seas, a non-prof­it NGO in Trinidad and To­ba­go that un­der­takes sci­en­tif­ic re­search, ed­u­ca­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy, leads the deep-sea sci­en­tif­ic ex­pe­di­tion named Deep Won­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the High Seas.

“From June 29 to Ju­ly 28, sci­en­tists will con­tin­ue us­ing cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and re­al-time pub­lic en­gage­ment to un­cov­er new knowl­edge about one of T&T’s least un­der­stood ecosys­tems while gath­er­ing vi­tal da­ta and in­spir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of ocean ex­plor­ers.”

Con­grat­u­lat­ing the team, which is led by Dr Di­va Amon, on pass­ing the halfway mark of the ex­pe­di­tion, Swarats­ingh said, “I ex­tend heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions to the ded­i­cat­ed team at Spe­Seas and all par­tic­i­pants in­volved in this land­mark deep-sea ex­pe­di­tion in the wa­ters of T&T. A spe­cial thank you is al­so in or­der to the Schmidt Ocean In­sti­tute for its in­valu­able sup­port.”

He added, “Your com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing ma­rine sci­ence and ex­pand­ing our un­der­stand­ing of the rich bio­di­ver­si­ty that ex­ists be­neath our seas is both com­mend­able and in­spir­ing.”

Every dis­cov­ery made through this ex­pe­di­tion strength­ens our na­tion­al and glob­al knowl­edge base, sup­ports ev­i­dence-based plan­ning and con­tributes to the sus­tain­able man­age­ment of our plan­et’s pre­cious ma­rine re­sources.”