Weddell Sea News

Scientists aboard Britain's high-tech polar research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough are headed to the Weddell Sea to investigate how carbon dioxide moves and transforms in the Southern Ocean.The ship departed Tuesday from Punta Arenas, Chile for the 30-day scientific expedition.As the carbon in the seawater rises to the surface near Antarctica, it interacts with the atmosphere, ice, and microscopic plants and animals, called phytoplankton and zooplankton, near the ocean surface, before descending to the ocean depths.

Digital network provider Marlink has completed the integration of internet services on Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot to provide three LEO solutions for the ship’s polar itineraries.The installation is the first in the maritime sector to combine Marlink’s Sealink GEO VSAT, with Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Iridium LEO services. The agreement with Ponant reflects Marlink’s ability to provide guaranteed throughput VSAT services with emerging high speed, low latency LEO services.The…

It was 1914 when the English explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set sail on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard a ship called Endurance. It was an ill-fated journey: the ship got trapped in the ice and eventually crushed by pack ice in 1915. It sank to the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. (Shackleton and his entire crew survived the ordeal by escaping in smaller boats.)It was difficult to believe that the Endurance might ever be found. The icy Weddell Sea is inhospitable and the wreck lay in more than 3000 metres of water.

The wreckage of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which was crushed by Antarctic ice and sank some 10,000 feet (3,000 m) to the ocean floor more than a century ago, has been found, a team searching for it said on Wednesday.The three-masted sailing ship was lost in November 1915 during Shackleton’s failed attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.Previous attempts to locate the 144-foot-long wooden wreck, whose location was logged by its captain Frank Worsley…

Lindblad Expeditions announced the launch of its second new polar vessel, National Geographic Resolution, on her inaugural voyage to Antarctica, South Georgia and the Falklands. Under Antarctica’s clear blue skies and parked on fast ice in the Weddell Sea’s Duse Bay, guests walked onto the ice to cheer on Captain Heidi Norling as she christened the 126-guest National Geographic Resolution.“I wish this ship calm winds, fair seas, and great adventures. May everyone who sails with her be blessed,” marked Captain Norling as she tossed the bottle.

Shipbuilder and designer Vard on Monday said it delivered the newly built expedition cruise ship Le Commandant Charcot for the French cruise company Ponant.The electric hybrid polar exploration vessel propelled with liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been developed by Ponant, Stirling Design International, Aker Arctic and Fincantieri subsidiary Vard. The vessel, classified as Polar Class 2, is specially designed to bring passengers to discover the polar world’s extreme unexplored lands such as the geographic North Pole (90 degrees North Latitude), the Weddell Sea, the Ross Sea and Peter I Island.

Antarctica, the world’s last true wilderness, has been protected by an international treaty for the last 60 years. But the same isn’t true for most of the ocean surrounding it.Just 5% of the Southern Ocean is protected, leaving biodiversity hotspots exposed to threats from human activity.The Western Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost part of the continent and one of its most biodiverse regions, is particularly vulnerable. It faces the cumulative threats of commercial krill fishing…

The search for the Argentinian submarine was like hunting for the proverbial needle in a hay stack, except that it was a piece of straw. Elaine Maslin reports. At 7.19am, local time, on November 15, 2017, the last message was received from the San Juan submarine. She belonged to the Argentinian navy and was on a routine mission from Ushuaia in the Patagonia region to Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires province when she lost contact with the military. Fifteen days later, neither the submarine nor any debris had been found and the crew of 44 sailors were presumed dead.

As of January 1, 2019, Antarctic sea ice extent had experienced several days of record lows. These record-low extents, which followed a period of rapid ice loss in December, exemplify the high seasonal and year-to-year variability in Antarctic sea ice. With six to eight weeks remaining in the melt season, it remains to be seen whether the present situation will persist and lead to a record-low annual minimum. A discussion of Arctic conditions will be posted next week.Overview of conditionsOn January 1…

French cruise line Ponant has ordered the world's first hybrid electric cruise icebreaker with liquefied natural gas (LNG) propulsion, due to take passengers to extremely remote polar locales from 2021. The polar-ready luxury liner will be constructed by Fincantieri subsidiary Vard Holdings Limited, who secured the approximately $320 million shipbuilding contract. The hull will be built at Vard Tulcea in Romania, with delivery from Vard Søviknes in Norway scheduled for the second quarter of 2021.

The Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) today agreed to set aside more than 1 million square kilometres of the Ross Sea in recognition of its incredible scientific and biodiversity values. CCAMLR committed to creating a system of marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean in 2009 and has been discussing the creation of MPAs in the Ross Sea and East Antarctica for several years. Claire Christian, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, said  “ASOC is thrilled to see that CCAMLR has protected 1.55 million square km of the Ross Sea, 1.12 million square kilometers of which will be fully protected with the remaining area designated as special research zones.

Antarctic season ends in the homeport after half a year Bremerhaven / Germany, 11 May 2016. on Wednesday, 11 May 2016, the research vessel Polarstern is expected back in its home port of Bremerhaven after a good six months of Antarctic expeditions. In the austral summer, the research vessel of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), penetrated into the southern Weddell Sea as far as the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, where oceanographic and biological work which the focus. In addition, the expedition members provided logistical support for a research camp there. Few research vessels in the world are able to penetrate as far into the Antarctic Ocean as the Polarstern has managed to do on this Antarctic expedition.

On 29 October 2015 the research icebreaker Polarstern will leave its homeport in Bremerhaven for Cape Town, South Africa, where it is expected to arrive on 1 December. It will take 32 students hailing from 19 countries on board, who will be introduced to the latest methods and instruments used in oceanography. Nine instructors from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the FU Berlin and Ireland’s Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology will teach the participants in the “floating summer school”. 470 applications from around the globe were submitted for the 32 places on the North South Atlantic Transect Training Programme (NoSoAT).

Antarctica's ice paradox has yet another puzzling layer. Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports. The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica's expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region's sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent's sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica's ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating. Measuring sea ice thickness is a crucial step in understanding what's driving the growth of sea ice…

The United States National Ice Center (NIC) named three new icebergs after a previous iceberg B15T broke into four pieces. B15T remains, while the resultant icebergs are named B15Z, B15AA and B15AB. B15T is the largest surviving remnant of the largest ever recorded iceberg B15, which calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in March of 2000 and was roughly the size of Jamaica when it originally separated from Antarctica. As B15 broke apart, all pieces over 10 nautical miles long received their own designation and were tracked.

The Portsmouth-based UK survey ship HMS Protector was charged with putting a small team from the British Antarctic Survey ashore so they could collect geological samples on remote James Ross Island off the eastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Protector’s Commanding Officer Capt Peter Sparkes decided the safest and least risky option would be to sail through the ever-increasing pack ice and send in the Terra Nova, fast rescue craft Yelcho and the inflatable boat, Whiskey 1 to bring the scientists off.

A large iceberg has entered shipping lanes between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. The iceberg, named B-10A, measures 24 by 48 statute miles and could pose a hazard for mariners operating in the Southern Ocean, the National Ice Center reported. B-10A is presently located in the vicinity of Latitude 58 degrees, 36 minutes South, Longitude 57 degrees West, and is drifting southeast at approximately 7 to 9 miles per day. Smaller icebergs are breaking off B-10A as it moves into relatively warmer water. A cautionary zone has been established 165 miles in radius around the center point of B-10A. B-10, the “parent” iceberg from which B-10A formed, was once a piece of the Thwaites Ice Tongue, an extension of the Thwaites Glacier.