{"id":562,"date":"2016-10-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/cage\/2016\/10\/31\/into-the-thinning-ice-of-the-arctic-ocean\/"},"modified":"2023-04-04T10:33:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T08:33:24","slug":"into-the-thinning-ice-of-the-arctic-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/cage\/2016\/10\/31\/into-the-thinning-ice-of-the-arctic-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the thinning ice of the Arctic Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research vessel Polarstern reached new and barely explored areas of the High Arctic Ocean this October. The scientists on board found spectacular fauna on a little known seamount at 87\u00b0N.<\/h4>\n

Text: Maja Sojtaric<\/h6>\n

<\/p>\n

German icebreaker, research vessel Polarstern docked in Troms\u00f8 on a sunny morning in September. It was loading up equipment and goods for a long leg towards an area of increasingly thinning sea ice in the High Arctic Ocean at 87\u00b0N.<\/p>\n

46 scientists from various international research institutions were on board the Polarstern Expedition PS101<\/a>, preparing laboratories and technical gear for work in the Arctic autumn, under challenging weather and ice conditions.<\/p>\n

There are as many different stories as scientists on this ship and in the middle of it all is the leader of the expedition, marine biologist Antje Boetius. She is professor at the University Bremen<\/a>, and a group leader at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)<\/a> in Germany. Professor Boetius acts as a member of the CAGE Advisory Board at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.<\/p>\n

Robot with a hair-thin tether<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe are going to the Gakkel Ridge and specifically the Karasik seamount. Our aim is to find out if Arctic seamounts are hot spots of life in the Arctic as they are in other oceans. We will collect samples at the ocean floor and use a new type of robot to obtain information on the state of the deep-sea ecosystems. This area has, to our knowledge, never been ice free before and we have no images of the seafloor. So the robot provides a great opportunity for us to examine this extraordinary mountain under the sea.\u201d Boetius told us during our visit to the Polarstern in Troms\u00f8 Port.<\/p>\n

\"CAGE
CAGE director J\u00fcrgen Mienert with Antje Boetius on board RV Polarstern in September. Professor Mienert got to take a closer look at the impressive Nereid robot. The hybrid remote operating vehicle can travel great distances under the ice, while still remaining under real-time human control. Nereid Under-Ice (NUI) is built to travel up to 40 kilometers laterally underwater while collecting acoustic, chemical, and biological samples from the ocean environment. Photo: Maja Sojtaric<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The robot that Prof. Boetius is talking about is an automated and<\/em> remotely operated vehicle developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution<\/a>\u00a0 and John Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering<\/a>. Its recent upgrade to an under-ice deep-sea vehicle was funded by NASA\u2019s PSTAR <\/a>program.<\/p>\n

The robot can film; take pictures and work under the sea ice tethered to the ship by a fine glass fiber as thin as hair. Should the tether sever, the robot can find its own way home. In harsh Arctic conditions that is no small feat.<\/p>\n

Extraordinary mountain on the ocean floor<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Karasik Seamount is a mountain on the ocean floor at 87\u00b0North and 60\u00b0E. It is some 4500 meters high, slightly higher than Matterhorn, and a part of one of the most isolated and least explored mid-ocean ridges on Earth – the Gakkel Ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary between the North American and Eurasian Plate. This ridge system extends all the way through the Arctic basin from Greenland to Siberia and is known to have the slowest spreading rate of all mid-ocean ridges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Karasik Seamount belongs to a chain of seamounts rising from 5000 m to 500 m water depth. It makes it one of the steepest mounts that we know of in the Arctic. Close by, chemical plume signatures were detected during previous missions, and some seafloor sampling indicated the presence of active fauna in the water and at the seafloor.\u201d Boetius told us.<\/p>\n

A spectacular discovery<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When she spoke to us in September Prof. Boetius suggested that it was possible that Karasik hosts a completely new biogeographic province, inhabited by a fauna previously unknown to science and associated with methane release. The results at the end of the expedition in October proved her right.<\/p>\n