{"id":521752,"date":"2026-07-02T14:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/521752\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T14:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T14:11:08","slug":"voyage-to-the-end-of-the-world-floating-lab-to-explore-life-in-arctic-adrift-in-ice-arctic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/521752\/","title":{"rendered":"Voyage to the end of the world: floating lab to explore life in Arctic adrift in ice | Arctic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six scientists and six crew will travel next month to Kirkenes, a remote Arctic town in Norway<\/a> near the Russian border, to begin an odyssey to one of the most inhospitable, inaccessible and least-studied regions on Earth. There, they will climb onboard a futuristic, floating laboratory \u2013 the French-built Tara polar station.<\/p>\n

They will enter a harsh and isolating environment: months of complete darkness and temperatures as low as -50C (-58F). Arriving in Norway on 14 August, they will await good conditions and an icebreaker to open a route for them before setting off on an eight-month voyage, overwintering through long, intense polar nights onboard a 26-metre-long, 16-metre-wide vessel built to be frozen into the pack ice, which will drift slowly over the north pole to Greenland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their mission is to gather data on the impact of climate breakdown and pollution on the central Arctic<\/a> Ocean\u2019s unique, complex and largely unknown ecosystems, one of the most fragile in the world, before it changes for ever.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are losing species before we have time to discover them,\u201d says Romain Troubl\u00e9, a microbiologist turned sailor and executive director of the Tara Ocean Foundation, a French philanthropic organisation. \u201cSo we\u2019re there to document these. In the next 20 years, everything will shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romain Troubl\u00e9 with his award onboard the Tara polar station. Photograph: Handout<\/p>\n

For his work on developing the polar station, Troubl\u00e9 was awarded the prestigious Shackleton medal<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Nature magazine described him, and \u00c9tienne Bourgois, who is the co-founder of the Tara Ocean Foundation, as \u201cvisionary thinkers\u201d<\/a>. An editorial likened the continuous two-year expedition of the first Tara vessel, a schooner that traversed coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean and spawned research that has helped develop theories on reef formation and biodiversity, to expeditions such as Charles Darwin\u2019s onboard HMS Beagle in 1831-36.<\/p>\n

double quotation markWe know pretty well the physics of the Arctic \u2026 But we have no clue about the life, the biological aspect. It is a blank sheetRomain Troubl\u00e9<\/p>\n

An earlier iteration of the Tara schooner travelled to the Arctic in 2006, to complete a transpolar drift, only the second such expedition in the central Arctic since the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen<\/a> completed the first in his ship, the Fram, in 1893-96.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided we wanted to do it again in the future, with more funding, with more means,\u201d says Troubl\u00e9, nephew of Agn\u00e8s Troubl\u00e9, co-founder of the Tara Ocean Foundation and better known as the fashion designer agn\u00e8s b. \u201cWe know pretty well the depth, the physics of the Arctic. But we have no clue about the life, the biological aspect. It is a blank sheet to discover.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tara polar station is designed to be on a continuous expedition spanning 20 years. Photograph: Mae\u0301va Bardy\/Tara Ocean Foundation<\/p>\n

The design of the station, came from Agn\u00e8s Troubl\u00e9 and Bourgois, while Troubl\u00e9 raised the required \u20ac26m (\u00a322m) funding and organised the mission. This presented several challenges, he says, not least how to put together scientists from 15 countries as well as the \u201chuman challenge\u201d for the personnel onboard.<\/p>\n

The scientists and crew will be very remote and while they can be rescued in an emergency, it could take a week to reach them. This will be the first stage in what is planned to be a continuous expedition over 10 legs and spanning 20 years, aimed at driving policy changes that would protect the Arctic.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI\u2019ve never experienced polar night. My biggest fear is the darkness \u2026 [but] how often do you get the chance to do something like this?Dr Nina Schuback<\/p>\n

It is a race against time: the Arctic is warming three to four times faster than anywhere else on the planet and the sea ice that once protected the region is melting fast, exposing the sea to threats from shipping, fishing, mining and pollution.<\/p>\n

Fridtjof Nansen\u2019s specially designed schooner, Fram, on Roald Amundsen\u2019s expedition to the south pole in 1911. Photograph: S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung Photo\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Dr Nina Schuback, a biological oceanographer who will take leave from the Swiss Polar Institute to join the expedition, says: \u201cWe know that the central Arctic Ocean is changing really, really rapidly. We can see the ice conditions changing, using satellite data, but if you want to talk about the effect this has on biology, it is very hard to get data.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Arctic Ocean and sea ice supports an interconnected web of life, from polar bears, walruses and beluga whales, to microbes such as ice algae, that form the foundation of the food chain.<\/p>\n

Schuback and her colleagues will sample microbes in seawater, through the station\u2019s \u201cmoon pool\u201d, a central opening that will also be the launch point for divers, underwater drones and remotely operated vessels to descend into the icy depths. They hope to discover new species that have adapted to this unique region where, for almost half of the year, the sun does not rise.<\/p>\n

A polar bear clinging to a melting ice floe near Svalbard. Photograph: Arterra Picture Library\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Schuback, who was subjected to a rigorous selection process that one scientist likened to the evaluation for the International Space Station<\/a>, admits she is both \u201cexcited and scared\u201d at the prospect of going through a polar winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never experienced polar night. My biggest fear is the darkness. You get tired,\u201d she says, adding: \u201cAnd I do a lot of exercise but it will be hard on such a small platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut time will go very quickly. There\u2019s exciting science \u2013 and how often do you get the chance to do something like this? I feel very privileged.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six scientists and six crew will travel next month to Kirkenes, a remote Arctic town in Norway near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-521752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}