Europe’s largest wooden schooner to depart for Arctic mission

Europe’s largest wooden schooner, S/V Linden will set sail from Svalbard, Norway, next week (1 September 2023) with a team of scientists and ‘citizen scientists’ from the Ocean Warrior project, a research mission to build greater scientific understanding of the marine environment in the Arctic and the impacts of global climate change.

Ocean Warrior is the brainchild of internationally-renowned explorer, Jim McNeill, who has been running scientific expeditions to the Arctic for over two decades and has acted as a consultant for natural history programmes such as the BBC’s Frozen Planet.

The expedition will collect critical scientific measurements from remote areas of the Arctic Ocean in order to build up an improved picture of the changes taking place due to climate change and other factors, as well as help to ‘ground-truth’ data collected via satellites. 

The project is being supported by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), a world leader in the field of marine research, Valeport, (which designs and manufactures oceanographic and hydrographic instrumentation), Mole Energy, Dartmoor Brewery and Henri Lloyd.

“Our quest is to help scientists put a better, more immediate ‘finger on the pulse of our planet’ by exploring the extreme environments on Earth in the greatest detail,” says McNeill. “These are the indicators of change and by measuring, benchmarking and monitoring over a 10-year period we should be able to detect changes, both good and bad.

“Through the citizen science aspect of the explorations we’re also enabling people from different walks of life to come and be part of something that will generate highly important scientific research. I am so honoured and delighted to have Icarus and his team at PML spearheading the science. As one of the centres of excellence, worldwide, I look forward to pushing boundaries together.”

The expedition also aims to install and test scientific and technological equipment such as weather stations, FerryBox, CTD, bathymetry, communications, and safety. An online dashboard will be created to convey the findings and capture stories through digital and broadcast content capture.

For the next 10 years, it is intended that Ocean Warrior will travel to remote areas of the Arctic Ocean, covering over 10,000 nautical miles each year between June and October, collecting data on a range of key ‘indicators’ – in areas such as water quality, plankton, eDNA, salinity and ocean acidity.

It is thought this data will help scientists gain a clearer understanding of the pace of changes taking place, their impacts on marine ecosystems, and what the future may hold for the Arctic region and the wildlife, populations and economies which depend upon it.

“We’re delighted to be the scientific partner aboard Ocean Warrior and are extremely excited about the prospect of delivering research with her over a sustained time period,” comments Professor Icarus Allen, chief executive of PML.

“To support a sustainable future for the Ocean we need to be in a position to monitor the changes which are happening. Ocean Warrior will be a valuable addition to this pursuit and I’m looking forward to seeing how we can develop the project over the years ahead.” 

Main image courtesy of Torsten Dederichs.