Bound for Cape Town

On the 11^th November at 14:00, 25 „scholars“ from all over the globe, 11 lecturers, 6 scientists, 9 logistic experts and two weather men, embarked onto RV Polarstern in Bremerhaven port.

All cruise participants were introduced to the ship and their cabins and safety drill. We ate the first of many sumptuous meals on board. In the middle of the night the crew was still terribly busy stowing and doing last minute checks for our cruise, and the last lost luggage and bunches of flowers were delivered to participants.

On the 12^th November RV Polarstern left Bremerhaven „on the dot“ and headed out into the North Sea. It was a very cold day, but still the cruise participants, filled with happy anticipation, stood on the monkey deck for a long time waving to persons on land.

Twenty-five scholars, who were chosen from 500 applicants, are taking part in the NoSoAT 2016 „Climate and Ocean Training Programme“. This is set upon RV Polarstern as a collaboration of POGO (Partnership for Observations in the Global Oceans), NIPPON FOUNDATION and the Irish programme “SMART”.

Ten teachers from „TROPOS“(Leibnitz Institut für Troposphären Physik), from the universities Galway (IRL), Newcastle (UK), FU Berlin, Münster, Leipzig, the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg and the AWI volunteered for this cruise.

They are experts in Climate, Oceanography, Remote Sensing, Atmospheric Research, Maritime Law and Marine Art. 

It is our aim to train up young scientists in the practical sides of ocean and climate research.

The scholars were divided into work-groups on the respective topics at the beginning of the cruise and have started to work on the different topics and projects. The teaching changes over to a new group every five days. We set up our different labs and a very large art studio.

The researchers on board, who, e.g. are doing ballast water research, or who work on aerosols and atmosphere, were immediately subjected to a barrage of curious questions from the enthusiastic scholars. The expertise of our nine logistics specialists, who, for example, are setting up the communication channels and the ships data base „DShip“ , was a very welcome addition to the cruise. After only a few hours there was clear team spirit and the feeling of joint endeavor.

On the 13th of November, the practical side of our studies took off. At 8:00 am we took a sample with a „scientific bucket” in which nutrients, salinity, pH und temperature were the measurement parameters.

After this we left the turbid and cold waters of the North Sea behind us and crossed the shelf edge in the open Atlantic.

In the next weeks aboard this wonderful ship we will research the Atlantic Ocean with foci atmospheric, oceanographic, physical, biogeochemical, biological techniques and air chemistry. We have now sampled 10 different stations successfully and are blessed with wonderful weather.

Our blogs, tweets and photos are to be found on the AWI web site.

On this note - I now leave you to go to our evening talk and weather report sending you our best wishes from the “Deep Blue”.

                                                                                              Karen Wiltshire