On Friday 2 May, 26 scientists from thirteen different countries boarded the icebreaker RV Kronprins Haakon for a five-week scientific cruise into the pack ice north of Svalbard. This cruise is the first field campaign of the Micro-SHIFT project and has been organized as a drift campaign, meaning we will moor the boat to a single ice floe and take daily samples of that same piece of ice over a 20-day period. In this campaign we will target the unique microbes of sea ice ridge features - formed when pieces of free-drifting ice smash into one another - as well as the bottom-ice diatom bloom that typically grows at this time of the year. Follow our journey as we drift in the Arctic sea ice pack!
May 9, 2025
Be aware! Science and safety in the polar bears' home
(Credit: Megan Lenss, PhD Student @ NPI, UiT & iSi BIO laboratory)
Our first view of some wonderful brown ice - which means the presence of algae! Our 20-day sampling period has been meticulously planned, with a four-day cycle defined by sampling of various algal microhabitats in the ice including ridges, leads, brines, internal horizons, and the classical bottom ice. Several novel experimental methods are included, such as in situ and in vivo incubations using both stable and radio isotopes as well as on-ice light stress experiments. We've got two different under-ice robots, a handful of hyperspectral sensors, and an intention to collect nearly a total of 300 ice cores. Although most scientists on board are biologists, it's not the iconic Arctic megafauna like the polar bear that we're interested in, but rather the intricacies of those tiny organisms living within the ice that can't be seen with the naked eye.
Regardless of our seeming disinterest in the polar bear, we are on their turf, and a campaign like this is ultimately on their terms. It's exciting stuff and if I were a polar bear I would also want to check it out.
Polar bears are not stressed by a vessel lying at rest, and it's not uncommon that a polar bear wanders into a scientific site in the pack ice. In fact, with our location north of Svalbard just a month or so after the bears have left their winter dens, it's expected.Amongst our scientific planning and preparation, we also receive training in polar bear safety. It is imperative that our work is safe for both bears and people, and we will follow strict guidelines from the Norwegian Polar Institute. How the bear safety watch from the bridge scans for polar bears. Together we cover a 360 degree view of our ice floe. Because our work will focus on several different aspects of microbial life in the sea ice, we anticipate having up to seven separate on-ice workstations. However, for bear safety we will never have more than three separate working groups on the ice at the same time. When on the ice, our scientists will be protected in various ways. Each working group will have a dedicated polar bear guard with a flare gun, rifle, binoculars, and VHF. On-ice bear guards are back up for the ship-based bear watch.
The bear watch is set up on the bridge with three individuals working in 45-minute shifts to scan the ice for bears. An additional bridge manager is also present and maintains constant communication between the bear watch and the bear guard. Bear watch is a shared responsibility among our science team. All scientists on board are trained in basic polar bear safety, including organized plans for evacuation when a bear is spotted. Being bear aware is the backbone of scientific work in Arctic pack ice.Although we have spent months preparing detailed sampling plans, our access to the ice is dependent on the presence, or rather absence, of the polar bear. As scientists, we are privileged to visit the pack ice and strive to remember that we are guests in this landscape.Our work is planned and goals defined, but we will always pay respect to the wildlife who call the pack ice home.Our first polar bear encountered while en route to the start position of our home ice floe (Credit: Anna Miettinen, UiT) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
10 May, 2025
Welcome to 'The Kindergarden'
(Credit: Karley Campbell UiT & iSi BIO laboratory, Micro-SHIFT PI)
We have made our way north from Tromsø, past Svalbard and over the Yermak plateau, into the deep basins of the central Arctic Ocean. The water depth here is over 4000 meters. The sea ice floating above this vast ocean is fragmented, with individual ice pieces (or floes) that vary in size from one-to-many kilometers. Today we choose one floe to stay with for our drift. For it to last the coming weeks and support our science goals, the floe must be about 10 km in size. It must have ridges as well as smooth surface features. It needs access to an opening of water known as a lead – and crucially, it must survive the icebreaker securing itself about 300 meters into the floe. One crack of the ice during the parking operation could have devastating consequences for the integrity of the floe and our science. A few potential floes are attempted and unfortunately abandoned, but in the early morning hours the icebreaker is secure.
The home floe is quickly nicknamed ‘The Kindergarden’ because it has several ridges acting to fence in an area of smooth ice that will be a focus of our playful operations. First we install equipment into and under the sea ice to log information, such as light and temperature, throughout our stay. We also make several holes of nearly 1 x 1 meter (covered in the photo below by a green tent) so that instruments like remotely operated diving vehicles can be put into the water underneath the sea ice. Soon after we begin taking samples of water, snow and ice. Let the science begin!
Drone photo of 'The Kindergarden' work area (Credit: Christian Katlein, AWI)
(Credit: Anne Braakmann-Folgmann and Catherine Taelman, UiT & Earth Observation Research Group)
Catherine Taelman and Anne Braakmann-Folgmann keeping an eye on the drone during take-off from the heli-deck (Credit: Christian Katlein, AWI)Drones allow us to see the sea ice from above and map a large area. They let us see how the home floe is changing over time. For example, strong winds can create new ridges or widen the leads between the individual ice floes. Drone can also access more remote areas, putting the individual samples into a larger perspective. We are also experimenting with creating a 3D model of the floe from drone imagery. To create a 3D model, the drone covers the same area five times and tilts the camera in different directions during each flight to gain a more varied perspective and hence a sense of the surface elevation. The sparsity of features, the highly textured ice and snow, and the drift problem make this a hard task.The bottom of the sea ice cannot be seen by our drone and would require underwater vehicles or additional sensors. In the 3D maps we create, key features like the ship, the ridges, the tents, and the holes stand out and their relative elevation difference to the flat sea ice areas appears realistic. In sunny conditions, the shadows of snow dunes and ridges are misinterpreted as ditches, though. So, as is usual in science, this technique is still under development and more testing is required to improve the 3D modeling of snow and sea ice. The sea ice is a challenging environment to fly in and to correctly map – and this is not just because of the cold.Sea ice drifts with the winds and currents. This means that the take-off location registered by the drone moves during the flight and the drone cannot land or “return to home” automatically. During a 20-minute flight the ship typically drifts a few hundred meters, so we have to take this into account when planning the flight patterns.On the post-processing side, the sea ice landscape is challenging to map because snow and ice look mostly white, have little contrast, and are very textured in appearance. In order to stitch the images together, the computer relies on finding features that are identifiable in several images. Examples of features that are picked up by the computer are: sensors and tents on our main working area, some large ridges, the edge of the lead, and the ship. When many images cover only flat ice or water, the stitching becomes difficult, and we must rely on the position of the drone while taking the images.A first result of the experimental 3D mapping of the floe
