By Damien Ringeisen | (Last blogpost from PS115.2 expedition to the Arctic after Polarstern's arrival in Bremerhaven) Is there a more iconic picture than a polar bear stranded on a piece of ice to illustrate climate change? As everybody surely knows, the artic sea ice is melting away. ... [Read more]
By Myriam Caron | 81°N 128°E. As an ArcTrain PhD Student studying geology in the polar regions, it is with great excitement that I came on board the R/V Polarstern, with the Arctic Ocean as a destination. After several years spent studying the Arctic, what a joy to finally be able to go ... [Read more]
By Charles Bruntte | 82N, 143E. We wake up to a radiant Sun and a calm sea. This is a very pleasant surprise after a few days of high waves that challenged everyone's tolerance to motion sickness. Today the wind is low and the air is not too cold. Samira and I take this opportunity to pay a ... [Read more]
By Sergei Freiman | Over the last three days, every inhabitant of the Polarstern could feel the beat of the seismic airguns that shake the entire vessel 4 times per minute. The shots sound like the heartbeat of an immense and calm animal. But how big has to be this incredible animal with such a ... [Read more]
By Charles Brunette (McGill University) | 81N, 145E. It has now been two weeks since the expedition PS115/2 started. What have the ArcTrain students been doing so far? Apart from just being excited about being in the middle of the Arctic Ocean on the icebreaker Polarstern and taking loads of ... [Read more]
By Anouk Vlug | It is 4 days ago that I boarded the RV Polarstern. The sea is currently calm, which gave me the courage to start writing this blog post. I am Anouk Vlug, one of the ArcTrain PhD students that joint PS 115.2 expedition into the Arctic as a part of the ArcTrain Floating ... [Read more]
By Maren Richter | We are almost at the end of our cruise and after almost three weeks on board I have still not seen a polar bear! And that after participants of previous cruises had assured me that I would definitely see one. Even if there were none in central Fram Strait then at least ... [Read more]
By Maren Richter | By now almost half of my stay on Polarstern is over. Polarstern left Bremerhaven at 9am on the 10th of July with 42 nautical crew and 57 scientists on board, their instruments, lab materials and supplies. A tv crew was there and spectators stood in Bremerhaven’s drizzle to ... [Read more]
By Andreas Muenchow, University of Delaware | Peter and I could hear the swoosh of our ocean sensors breaching the surface like a whale taking a deep breath before s/he dives down again. Only after the “swoosh” did we see the yellow, blue, and red tones of the sensor packet bobbing at the ... [Read more]
By Susanne Lunz and Christoph Knöfel | Sometimes one has to move quickly. We got the green light for our first flight after the daily weather brief in the morning which is short and sweet. We have half an hour to get ready, collect our gear, move it up stairs to the helicopter deck, don into the ... [Read more]
