Ocean Warrior project to record changes in the Arctic’s marine environment

The brainchild of explorer Jim McNeill, who has been running scientific expeditions to the Arctic for over two decades, the Ocean Warrior project will set sail from Svalbard, Norway, onboard S/V Linden at the start of September.

Designed to collect scientific measurements from remote areas of the Arctic Ocean, the Ocean Warrior project will also help to ‘ground-truth’ data collected via satellites. 

For the first ten-day leg of the expedition, the team of 18, including crew members, scientists and citizen scientists will build an understanding of the vessel and her capabilities so that the potential for scientific data capture can be maximised. The expedition aims to install and test equipment such as weather stations, FerryBox sensors, CTD sensors, and Bathymetry instrumentation. An online dashboard will be created to convey the findings and capture stories through digital and broadcast content capture.

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The project is being supported by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), Valeport, which designs and manufactures oceanographic and hydrographic instrumentation, Mole Energy, Dartmoor Brewery and Henri Lloyd.

“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,” said Prof 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.” 

Travelling to seldom-visited areas of the ocean each year between June and October, the Ocean Warrior project intends to cover 10,000 nautical miles each year, over the next ten years, collecting data on a range of key indicators in areas such as water quality, plankton, eDNA, salinity and ocean acidity.

This 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.

"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. 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." said McNeill.