The mission to rescue moorings in the Beaufort Sea that had to be planned on short notice, has succeeded! All three moorings hold scientific instruments and data recorded for the CAATEX project since September 2019. They have been picked up by Hanne Sagen, her team, and the KV Svalbard crew under extremely harsh Arctic conditions.

Once again, the ice breaker KV Svalbard has set course for the Arctic Ocean. Onboard are NERSC researchers Hanne Sagen and Espen Storheim who plan to retrieve equipment from the CAATEX-project to prevent data loss. This mission was planned on short notice – exceptional circumstances made it necessary. 

In June, ten MSc students from the University of Bergen and the Western Norway University of Applied Science embarked on the coast guard vessel KV Svalbard to participate in the research school cruise near Svalbard, led by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center. Their goal was to get hands-on experience during a scientific cruise in the Arctic.

Who were the participants?

At this moment, the Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker KV Svalbard is on a scientific expedition on the central Arctic Ocean with eleven scientists from different Norwegian and European institutions. Demanding operations are carried out to recover deep-water moorings deployed last summer. The moorings carry instruments to observe the ocean temperatures, salinity, ‘ocean sound’, carbon dioxide, and currents below the Arctic sea ice for one year. All this to calculate the ocean temperature below the sea ice.