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 Rafael Lazo Perez | The ship trembles while we slowly advance through the ice. A crack appears in the ice piece blocking our way. The ship cracks it into two pieces resembling the school charts that show the separation of the continents. We are approaching to Greenland and ice is becoming a ... [Read more]
By Fokje Schaafsma | On Friday the 23th of June, RV Polarstern left Svalbard for the SiPCA expedition to the Arctic Ocean. SiPCA stands for Survival of Polar cod in the Arctic Ocean. The main aim of the expedition is to learn more about the life of Polar cod, which is a species that is widely ... [Read more]
by Josephine Rapp | During this expedition I planned to do sea ice work for the very first time. However, due to bad weather conditions and very thick fog during the first weeks of the cruise, I first thought that it would be cancelled after all, since both the helicopter and the zodiac require ... [Read more]
By Sandra Gdaniec | A couple of days ago we found something we have been waiting for and hoping to find during this expedition, namely ice rafted sediment, or as we like to call it, “dirty ice”. The ice is dirty because sediment and/or suspended particles from rivers have been incorporated ... [Read more]
By Erika Allhusen, Robert Ricker, Hazel Hartman-Jenkins, Andreas Krell, Gerhard Diekmann, Ellen Damm | As Miss Smilla searched snow and ice for clues to solve an arctic crime; similarly, we search the arctic icepack to for answers to a variety of scientific questions. How is biomass ... [Read more]
Only few days are left; we are approaching the end of the cruise. Last Wednesday we already entered the open ocean and left the Arctic sea-ice edge behind. On our way south, we passed an area inhabited by quite a few seals, and some of us were lucky enough to see whales. On Tuesday we had our last ... [Read more]
We are at our 6th ice station and the fog has rolled in. Standing out on the back deck, you feel almost like you are enclosed inside one of those tiny snow globes, the scenery blanketed in snow and the Polarstern wrapped in a foggy mist. Looking out over the rail of the Polarstern, ... [Read more]
Without light, life is not possible. Algae depend on the sun`s energy and can only grow if there is enough light penetrating the ocean. The depth at which light reaches is dependent on the various substances present in the water. If specific substances are abundant, the sea water turns yellow or ... [Read more]
Beyond 80 degrees North, the seascape is dotted with thick ice floes and sometimes you can’t see where the ice ends and the sky begins. It’s beautiful. The waters are calm except for the wake and churning ice left by the Polarstern. A tiny trail of muddy water is all we leave behind as we head ... [Read more]
