The Malaspina circumnavigation expedition was an interdisciplinary research project to assess the impact of global change on the oceans and explore their biodiversity. The 250 scientists on board the Hespérides and Sarmiento de Gamboa embarked on an eight-month expedition (starting in December 2010) scientific research with training for young researchers - advancing marine science and fostering the public understanding of science. The project was under the umbrella of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation's Consolider – Ingenio 2010 programme and was led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) with the support of the Spanish Navy. It is named after the original scientific Malaspina Expedition between 1789 and 1794, that was commanded by Alejandro Malaspina. Due to Malaspina's involvement in a conspiracy to overthrow the Spanish government, he was jailed upon his return and a large part of the expedition's reports and collections were put away unpublished, not to see the light again until late in the 20th century. Objectives Assessing the impact of global change on the oceans Global change relates to the impact of human activities on the functioning of the biosphere. These include activities which, although performed locally, have effects on the functioning of the earth's system as a whole. The ocean plays a central role in regulating the planet's climate and is its biggest sink of and other substances produced by human activity. The project will put together Colección Malaspina 2010, a collection of environmental and biological data and samples which will be available to the scientific community for it to evaluate the impacts of future global changes. This will be particularly valuable, for example, when new technologies allow levels of pollutants below current thresholds of detection to be evaluated. Exploring the biodiversity of the deep ocean Half the Earth's surface is covered by oceans over 3,000 metres deep, making them the biggest ecosystem on the planet. Nevertheless, due to the limitations of the technology available until just recently, the oceans remain something of a mystery. Indeed, it is often said that we know more about the Moon or Mars than Earth's oceans. The development of new genomic techniques has now made it possible to explore life's diversity in the sunless depths of the oceans and assess the metabolic potential of the life they conceal. Exploring biodiversity in the ocean's depths could also yield important discoveries with applications in biotechnology. Assessing the impact of the