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Beginning Dec. 7, Etienne will spend four months on Clipperton with some 40 other experts from France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), among them biologists, geologists, divers, ornithologists and computer technologists. Their task is to conduct an exhaustive inventory, a first-ever classification of the local flora and fauna -- as Darwin did in the Galápagos Islands, and Humboldt in the Andes. The team will also study the origins of the species recorded and try to determine how they reached this coral atoll that covers an area of just seven square km and has an internal freshwater lagoon. Unique to the East Pacific, it was discovered by Fernando Magellan in 1521, but was ultimately named after an 18th-century pirate who used it as a hideout. France annexed the island in 1855, but in 1897 Mexico took it over and attempted to settle people there, unsuccessfully. A heated sovereignty dispute ensued, until international arbitration granted France authority over it in 1931. Clipperton is included on the list of protected areas of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which classifies it as ''one of the least altered island systems in the Pacific Ocean,'' and ''the fauna and flora consist of an unusual assemblage including both Panamic (American) and Indo-Pacific forms.'' In a Tierramérica interview, Etienne stressed that the coral atoll, also known as Isla de la Pasión, ''is not virgin land.'' Four centuries ago, he pointed out, an Asian cargo ship sank just off Mexico's Pacific coast. ''The rats from the ship reached Clipperton and reproduced with extraordinary facility, and today constitute a true plague'' that his team proposes to eliminate as its first task. Tides also bring all sorts of waste to the island, and humans have mistreated the area, even using Clipperton as a military base. In the 1960s, France considered testing atomic bombs there, and in the 1970s as a nuclear waste site, but both plans were scrapped due to protests from Mexico and the United States. Etienne suspects that drug traffickers use the island as a stopover, utilising a precarious landing strip that was built during the Second World War. According to Philippe Bouchet, a CNRS biologist on the expedition, interest in Clipperton ''lies in the fact that its ecosystems are very simplified, unlike those of the equatorial forests.'' ''Because of the coral atoll's isolation and its extremely scarce natural resources, species face enormous difficulties in establishing themselves there. But once they have done so, they reproduce very easily,'' said Bouchet. There are some 100,000 birds of various species living on the island, and there are many amphibians, red or tuna crabs (Pleuroncodes planipes) and other crustaceans, and fish -- with around 115 species identified around the island, says Etienne. An atoll is the remnant of a sunken, extinct volcano, on which a coral reef has formed. In the case of Clipperton Island, after the volcano ended its active phase it began to sink, and its crater became a lagoon, protected from the sea and from external biological influences. In symbiosis, the coral protects the green algae, which through photosynthesis produce the oxygen they need. This process cannot occur deeper than 20 meters because the not enough light reaches those depths. Clipperton ''is a geo-chemical laboratory unique in the world,'' because the water in its lagoon lacks oxygen deeper than eight meters, and contains high proportions of sulphuric acid, making it a ''natural melting pot where phosphates are formed, and an ideal environment for the emergence of new organisms,'' Etienne explained. The 58-year-old explorer rose to fame in France for having crossed the Arctic on foot in 1986, and for his repeated trips to the Himalayas. The research team going to Clipperton will study the DNA -- the genetic makeup -- of the organisms found on the atoll, and the effect of solar radiation on its plant and animal species. ''In particular we want to see if the species that live near the water surface have developed new mechanisms for resisting the ultraviolet rays,'' Etienne said. Through these studies, he believes it will also be possible to better understand the evolution over the millennia of climate phenomena like the warm-water currents of El Niño, which ever three to seven years flow from the western Pacific near Australia to the coasts of South America. During the four months he will be on Clipperton, the explorer will maintain an online diary, available on his website, to ''share this experience with all the world.'' (* Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Nov. 27 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)