Why Hong Kong has the toughest coral in the world, and how agnès b is on a mission to help save it

The large schooner berthed at Central Pier 9 earlier this month had travelled some 32,400 nautical miles before arriving in Hong Kong.

The French research vessel Tara set sail from Lorient, northern France, in May 2016 and is on an epic two-year oceanographic mission to explore the coral reefs of the Pacific. On its 10-day port call in Hong Kong the 16-person team, known as “Taranauts”, hosted hundreds of visitors, but they were here primarily to study coral.

“Hong Kong is an interesting place to sample coral because of the economic development and its impact on ocean biodiversity; we look at the impact of the pollution,” says scientist Sarah Romac from Roscoff, France, speaking in the vessel’s wet laboratory.

The biggest surprise, the team found, was local coral’s resilience.

The Tara Pacific 2016-18 expedition is not a French government, European Union or official university initiative. Backers of the foundation that runs the project are associated more with the catwalk than the laboratory.

The Tara project is the brainchild of Parisian fashion designer Agnès Troublé owner of the label agnès b and her son Etienne Bourgois, who bought the 36-metre aluminium sailing vessel in 2003. She started her fashion and design empire in a Paris shop in 1975. Today it has 2,100 employees and more than 332 stores and outlets around the world, including 25 in Hong Kong.