The transit

Polarstern's helideck

On windy days, I love to stand on the helicopter deck and listen. Air rushes through the upturned metal grates that line the helipad and make this absolutely gorgeous noise. It's high-pitched and whistle-like. You could convince me it was a flute choir tuning before rehearsal. I've heard this sound before - many times, actually - not only on Polarstern but also in downtown Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Metal grates abound in Longyearbyen, in the form of hand rails, fences, and snow-removal stations at the entrance to most buildings. That's it, one of my favorite sounds in the world - swift wind through a metal grate. 

We have been at sea for only three days, but I am fully adjusted. My stomach has solidified into a dense, nausea-immune rock. I am floating seamlessly between German and English, triggered subconsciously by the faces of my shipmates I have come to associate with each language. Rusty maritime skills that went woefully unused during the pandemic are resurfacing. I am in my element, without a doubt.

We passed offshore wind farms in the North Sea.

The first 6 days of our expedition are spent steaming north. We have a lot of ground to cover – 25 degrees of latitude, to be exact. The transit gives us an opportunity to prepare, to unpack our boxes, assemble our equipment, and make sure everything still works. As long as the sea state remains tolerable (which it has so far), we should be ready to go as soon as we arrive at the first station.

This expedition, my team has one goal: collect larvae. Extremely little is known about how organisms reproduce in the Arctic deep sea, so we're trying to change that. Our main collection tools are deep-sea plankton pumps that pull in water at 30 liters per minute and catch animals on a mesh filter. The pumps we're using have been successfully deployed by my old postdoc advisor and other researchers across the world for about 20 years now, but as far as I know, nobody has ever used them in the Arctic. With any luck, we'll collect specimens nobody has ever seen before and start unraveling the mystery of reproduction in the polar deep sea.

Stay tuned to the blog for updates during the expedition. I'll keep you as up-to-date as I can.