HMS Endurance is an ice breaker in the service of the British Royal Navy. Every northern autumn she heads to Antarctica to support British Antarctic bases and projects. The ship has a website dedicated to it, Visit and Learn, which tracks its travels and posts updates on its doings. Now you can also track HMS Endurance in Google Earth. An enterprising coder has used the publicly available data on the website to create a constantly updated file pinpointing the ship's current and past locations on Google's popular virtual globe. Here's how to follow along with the HMS Endurance using Google Earth: If you haven't already done so, ...

Thousands of amphipods can reduce fish carcasses to bones, but these carrion experts are unexpectedly scarce in the area of the recently collapsed Larsen B ice shelf, where the Polarstern Expedition is currently conducting research Baited traps consistently used to provide good numbers of amphipods throughout the expedition, whether designed to catch them or targeting fish. “Traps are secured on a metal frame, equipped with a weight and buoys designed to cope with the high pressure at the sea floor, and then dropped to the bottom. After 48 hours, the vessel returns, triggering the traps' release from the weights via an acoustic signal sent from a transmitter. Within 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the water depth, the traps float to the surface and are recovered,” explai...

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) remain an efficient technology to uncover the secrets of Antarctic sea floor fauna. A video sequence at the foot of the Larsen B ice-shelf remnant reveals deep-sea sea cucumbers as abundant inhabitants. ROVs have become standard non-invasive imaging tools for the Alfred Wegener Institute’s biological expeditions. For our expedition, devoted to the study of continental shelf sea floor communities (which were once under the now collapsed Larsen B ice-shelf), the ROV model Cherokee was selected (shown in the photo). “Inspection ROVs like the Cherokee are fast to deploy and easy to recover” explains the marine ecologist Julian Gutt, who has 15 years ROV experience in Antarctic sea floor fauna investigation. Already used on a...

The IPY is ambitious in scope and in scale. The IPY Programme Office has endorsed 99 projects with Antarctic or bipolar focus for the IPY. These projects encompass at least 350 research activities, of which 82% plan to conduct fieldwork in Antarctica. Of these activities, 105 (37%) activities are planning to leave behind physical infrastructure. To date, only two have completed any environmental impact assessments. The Antarctic Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) is conducting a project to enhance the environmental legacy of the IPY through outreach efforts to scientists, tourists and other visitors of Antarctica. We presented a poster on this subject at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, USA in December 2006. Our goal was to ra...

Climate change-induced increase of carbon dioxide, according to modelling approaches, is going to cause the acidification of the world’s oceans. By the year 2100 the current pH might drop by 0.5. Our research is focusing on the question ‘how do fish respond to such changes?’ At the department "Marine Animal Physiology" of the Alfred Wegener Institute, researchers developed a device that enables onboard measurements of the impact of decreased pH values on the gill functioning of freshly caught fish (see overview photograph). In order to simulate blood circulation, specially prepared gill tissue is constantly flushed with a saline solution. Special devices allow measurements to be taken of gill performance in plain and acidified seawater for more than 6 hours (see det...

Education and Outreach is playing an ever increasing role in the world of science. This is also true for our expedition especially with regard to the upcoming International Polar Year. Scientists, which rely on funding from the government, fulfil their obligation towards the general public and funding bodies by communicating their results in an easy and comprehensible manner. More and more scientific organisations such as the "Census of Marine Life" encourage liaisons between art and science. Unfortunately due to great scientific interest it was not possible to give an artist the opportunity to join the expedition. But an unexpected awakening of creativity, imagination, and artistic talent occurred onboard the “Polarstern”. Indeed these are skills that are also of high relevance to a...

“The Octopods are for the most part benthic or bentho-pelagic, living in holes or crevices, beneath large rocks or in caves… ” This has been the dogma of octopus habitat use for decades because observations have been limited to areas of the oceans where octopuses could be easily found: shallow, near-shore and typically rocky, habitats. But what of the majority of the ocean floor, where the bottom is characterized by muddy and sandy sediments, is there a place for octopuses here? The answer is "yes". Today’s technology enables us to see the ocean floor almost everywhere with high-resolution still photography and ROV-mounted video cameras. Images from the Polarstern’s first deployment of the photosled show octopuses burrowed in fine sediment, as seen in the attached image. Waters...

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Norway has developed a set of Visual Profile Elements for IPY. These include images, collages, fonts, colour schemes, textual graphics, and style manuals. The 'International Polar Year 2007-2008' text at the top of this and every other page of this web site comes from the Norwegian products; several other national IPY web sites use the same textual elements. We use other Norwegian-designed elements in our printed materials, and I use the textual elements, images, fonts and colour maps in all my presentations. We do not insist on the use of these elements, or declare them as the IPY standard. Instead, we feel very pleased to offer them for use by IPY participants, secretariats, and national organisations. Norway makes them available at no cost to the user. IPY IPO thanks the Norwe...

Below is a list of Press officers responsible for launch events around the world. This is also available as a PDF of press_officers. Please also consult National IPY Committees for information on national events. ICSU: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Carthage Smith"}, ICSU Paris WMO: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Paul Garwood"}, WMO Australia: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Sally Chambers"}, Government Antarctic Division Canada: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Karen Edwards"}, Canadian IPY secret...