The Tara Oceans expedition, a 2.5-year long and 57,000 mile long trajectory, was conceived to provide a snapshot of the distribution of planktonic organisms in the world ocean, providing 'A global-scale study of morphological, genetic, and functional biodiversity of plankton organisms in relation to the changing physico-chemical parameters of the oceans' (Karsenti et al., 2011). The expedition took place from September 2009 to March 2012, spanned the majority of the world's oceans, and included, besides a large array of biological sampling, hydrographic measurements, optical measurements of surface hyper-spectral particulate absorption and attenuation, hyper-spectral reflectance and HPLC pigments.E. Karsenti, S.G. Acinas, P. Bork, C. Bowler, C. De Vargas, J. Raes, and 22 co-authors, A holistic approach to marine eco-systems biology, PLoS Biol. 9, e1001177, (2011), doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001177.