A group of 50 researchers from 30 countries form the first scientific team to circumnavigate Antarctica in an attempt to measure pollution and climate change.
The international team will travel aboard the Russian research ship Akademik Treshnikov, that will sail from Cape Town (South Africa) on December 20 and return on March 18, 2017. The organizers of the Antarctic circumpolar expedition (ACE acronym in English ) expect to intensify cooperation to better understand the impact of humanity in the Antarctic ocean.
“Researchers will work on a series of interrelated fields, from biology to climatology, oceanography through for the sake of the future of this continent”, said the members of the expedition in a statement. “It is essential to have a better understanding of Antarctica, not only for preservation, but for the whole planet,” they added.
Team leaders convened last year to a competition for research projects, after receiving about 100 proposals selected 22. One of the winning projects is a Spanish institution, the Institute of Marine Sciences of Barcelona, and will consist of study and measure gases and released by the Arctic ocean particles into the atmosphere, and discover their role in the latter. Other projects will study the effect of plastic pollution in the food chain, and will map to whales, penguins and albatrosses.
Scientists also take samples of ice from the depths to investigate the conditions of the frozen continent before the Industrial Revolution.
ACE is the first project of the newly created Swiss Polar Institute (SPI, Polar Swiss Institute), an initiative of the European country to “strengthen international relations and collaboration between countries and to arouse interest in polar research in a new generation of young scientists. ”
The journey divided into three stages, with stops of supplies in the Australian city of Hobarth and Chile Punta Arenas.
