Expedition in the Arctic Region - page 1

Mission to the North Pole aboard the oceanographic ship 'Polarstern'

Two scientists of our Institute, Claude De Broyer and Patrick Martin, participate in a mission with the German icebreaker "Polarstern", off Spitzberg, at the border of the Northern Ice Cap. The departure takes place at Longyearbyen/Svalbard (Spitzberg) on July 19th and the arrival at Tromsø will take place on August 7th.

The "Polarstern" left her harbour of Bremerhaven on May 23d; her current mission is concentrated on the experiments with the French Remotely Operated Vehicle (a submarine) "VICTOR 6000", property of the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea. With the help of this submarine, a video survey of the bottom of the sea will be made at a depth of 2600 m, biological and sedimentary samples will be taken and a sophisticated monitoring of the chemical interactions between water and sediments will be realised.

The current journey of the "Polarstern" includes three independent missions, one off the Irish coast and one north of Tromsø. Claude and Patrick take part in a third investigation, concentrated on a small zone west of Svalbard (Spitzberg), called "Hausgarten" (our garden) by the German scientists, located at a depth of 2600 m. Long term investigations are being carried out in this zone since several years.

Our researchers will take samples of the fauna of amphipoda (order of Crustacea; see the pictures on this page) in order to study their biodiversity, their ecological role in the polar ecosystem, the diversity of their alimentary regime, their phylogenetic relationships and the history of the populations. This last topic will be part of a comparison between the two poles (North and South), as species from Antarctica could have colonized the world oceans via the abyssal zones and reach the abyssal zones of the Arctic. These researches make use of DNA-sequencing; samples are taken aboard the "Polarstern", in order to get the best possible material.