One Ocean Expedition 2025-2026 

A 12-month global voyage with the Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl - a floating ambassador for the UN Ocean Decade. Combining sail training, ocean science, education and diplomacy to inspire action for a sustainable ocean. 

2025 - 2026

One Ocean Expedition



Statsraad Lehmkuhl departed Los Angeles, USA on October 7 and is now at sea en route to Vancouver, Canada, arriving October 17. Aboard are the Royal Netherlands Naval College.

Over the course of a year, the expedition will visit 27 ports across three continents. Several legs are open to the public - no sailing experience needed! Welcome on board!

Sailing route

At sea en route to Vancouver, Canada

Follow our journey

Statsraad Lehmkuhl is equipped as a modern research vessel, with a wealth of advanced instruments. One of them is a CP300 scientific echo sounder developed by Kongsberg Maritime.

Ocean research:

The echo sounder that does a lot more than find fish

Sailing from Bergen to Los Angeles offered a rare opportunity to combine traditional observation with cutting-edge technology, mapping marine mammals across thousands of nautical miles.

Listen to the whales

Listening to the ocean

Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits Vancouver, October 17–21, 2025

Ports

Vancouver, Canada

Latest news

Latest videos

Following the success of the One Ocean Expedition 2021–2023, Statsraad Lehmkuhl is once again setting sail on a 12-month circumnavigation to promote ocean sustainability. The voyage will include 27 ports of call across three continents, combining ocean science, education and international cooperation to raise awareness about the crucial role of the ocean for a sustainable future.

On The One Ocean Expedition, Statsraad Lehmkuhl is filled with students, researchers and voyage crew who all work together to sail the big ship and gather experience and knowledge about the ocean.

Life on board

Tromsø, Norway

Bergen, Norway - Lerwick, UK

Reykjavik, Iceland

Nice, France 

Ponta Delgada, the Azores (Portugal)

Nuuk, Greenland

St. John's, Canada

Bermuda

Los Angeles, USA

Bermuda - Panama Canal 

Seattle, USA

San Fransisco, USA

San Diego, USA

La Paz, Mexico

Herradura, Costa Rica

Cartagena, Columbia

Herradura, Costa Rica - Panama Canal

Norfolk, USA

Cádiz, Spain

Brest, France 

Dublin, Ireland

Bergen, Norway

The CP300 is mounted in an instrument-pod in the bow below the waterline, nicknamed “The Fish”. It measures how much fish, plankton, and other organisms are present in the sea as the ship sails. It also maps the seabed, providing researchers with information about both the life surrounding the ship and the characteristics of the seafloor.

We spoke with one of the developers of the CP300, Olav Langeland. He is a civil engineer, a specialist in hydroacoustics, with over 40 years of experience from Simrad and Kongsberg Discovery.

– I’ve been involved in developing several echosounders over the years, ranging from relatively cheap and simple ones used in fisheries to highly advanced multibeam echosounders used by marine researchers, costing millions for a single instrument, says Olav.

The principle behind an echo sounder is the same no matter how advanced it is, it’s all about sending sound into the water.

– What we call a transducer is a specially designed combination of speaker and microphone, placed underwater, that transmits and receives sound. A regular sound speaker sets air in motion, the transducer moves the water, Olav explains. The principle is the same, although sound travels much faster in water than in air, up to 1600 m/s compared to around 330 m/s in air.

The time it takes for the sound to reflect and return as an echo tells us the distance, making it possible to map the seafloor and detect fish and other objects beneath the ship.

– But we can’t transmit a continuous sound wave, Olav explains. That would just be noise. We emit sound pulses lasting about a millisecond.

The emitted sound has a duration, a frequency, and an amplitude. The amplitude is how much sound is pushed out, the volume, while the frequency determines how high or low the tone is. Human hearing ranges from about 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz - or 20 kHz. Below that range we might feel the vibrations - above it, only dogs and other animals can hear.

Low-frequency sound waves, deep tones, travel the farthest. Whales communicate using sounds in the 9 to 40 hertz range and can communicate over distances of up to 1500 kilometers- like from London to Rome.

– If you want long-range detection using low frequency, the resolution is poor, explains Olav. To get good resolution, you have to increase the frequency, but then the echosounder’s range becomes shorter.

Resolution refers to how small and detailed the returning echoes can be distinguished?

– Yes, exactly. It’s about how small objects we can distinguish from the noise in the echoes, Olav says. For fishfinding we ended up with a compromise, and there’s a fun story about that: The person who made the first Simrad echo sounder some 70 years ago, wanted to make a 40 kHz transducer, but missed slightly and ended up with 38 kHz. That has since become a standard for fishfinding echosounders.

A 38 kHz transducer can reach depths of up to about 3000 meters. Lower-frequency echosounders can reach much deeper.

– The lowest frequency we use is 12 kHz, which can reach all the way down to the bottom of the deepest oceans at around 11000 meters. But there’s a relationship between frequency and size, the lower the frequency, the larger the transducer, Olav explains.

Echosounders with transducers from 12 kHz to 700 kHz is used, and for a long time, having multiple frequencies meant installing one transducer for each frequency.

– Most research vessels used to have eight or more different transducers, each operating at its own frequency. Expensive and complex. So some years ago, Simrad started developing what we call composite transducers. These can sweep through a range of frequencies rather than just emitting a single tone, Olav explains.

Like a speaker that can play different tones?

– Sort of, yes. But a bass speaker can’t handle the highest treble, and vice versa. These new transducers can sweep, for example, from 50 to 150 kHz. So you need far fewer transducers, maybe just one.

– It depends on the frequency, but typically a few transducers into one unit. Think of it like a loudspeaker with multiple speaker elements in one housing, with a control unit managing them all.

The transducer functions as both speaker and microphone.

– You emit a signal for just a millisecond, and then the microphone is always on, listening for the echo that returns from whatever the sound wave encounters, says Olav.

When you see a fish on an echo sounder it’s usually the swim bladder reflecting the sound, because it contains air and has a different density than the surrounding water.

– The worst thing in underwater acoustics is air bubbles under the transducer, that ruins everything. That’s why the transducers are mounted in the bow and low enough to stay in water all the time, says Olav.

From analog signals to advanced processing

In earlier times, echosounders were mechanical and required manual interpretation.

– In the old days it was fully analog, kind of like cutting an LP record. A stylus would etch a line on paper, and it was up to the operator to interpret what it meant, Olav explains.

Today, advanced signal processing is used to identify a lot of features in the returned echo. A fish, for instance, will create a small peak in the signal.

A modern echosounder can identify the type and size of a fish - when it is properly calibrated.

– The echo comes from the swim bladder, and its volume changes. The fish moves up and down, and we might see it from different angles, says Olav.

Calibration starts at the factory and continues onboard.

– All scientific surveys begin with calibration. And often, calibration is done again en route, Olav says. Sound speed in water depends on temperature, depth, and salinity. An echo sounder calibrated for the tropics won’t give accurate readings in the Arctic.

Calibration involves lowering and moving a metal sphere with known reflection properties beneath the ship.

– But that only calibrates for the water, not for fish. For that, we need to set a net and analyse the catch right after spotting fish on the echosounder. Then we can correlate echo strength with fish species and size.

Most recreational echosounders emit sound in one single direction. That’s like using a flashlight, you only see part of the room at a time. Modern systems use multibeam technology, emitting sound in multiple directions and combining the echoes into a comprehensive image.

The CP300 onboard Statsraad Lehmkuhl is such a multibeam echosounder, but also a special one.

– The CP in the name stands for "current profiler", Olav says. It functions as a regular echosounder but also measures water current speed and direction. It emits four beams in different directions and analyzes the variations in return signals.

This gives valuable information on the ocean currents in which Statsraad Lehmkuhl is sailing.

Olav Langeland began his career at Simrad, a pioneer in echo sounder technology.

– Simrad, originally Simonsen Radio, was founded in 1947. The first echo sounders were developed in the 1910s, but Simrad was among the first to make commercial echo sounders for the fishing fleet, says Olav.

Simrad was later acquired by the Kongsberg Group and became part of Kongsberg Maritime, now known as Kongsberg Discovery.

But the Simrad name lives on. In Iceland, people still refer to echo sounders, or 

 as it’s formally called in Icelandic, simply as “simrad”.

 are science coordinators on board Statsraad Lehmkuhl. Together with Francisco Amor Roldán they have structured and analysed all the sightings of marine mammals during the six months long voyage.

– All the visual observations are carefully written down by the persons standing at lookout and at the buoy watch, explain the researchers, and this allows us to compile a full map of marine mammals’ distribution along the route of the expedition, they write in their preliminary report.

On the map above all the sightings are marked. Whales as red squares, dolphins as blue, and turtles as green half-circles. Among the many observations were minke whales north of Iceland, humpback whales in Iceland’s Jökulfirðir fjord, as well as pilot whales and common dolphins.

Tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl is a silent ship. When sailing, there is no engine noise, perfect conditions if you want to eavesdrop on what's going on in the ocean. The ship is equipped with three hydrophones - underwater microphones that record sounds beneath the hull.

– Thanks to the hydrophones, we managed to listen to those marine mammals as well, the team writes.

Before analysing these recordings, the researchers carefully identified which sounds came from the ship’s own acoustic instruments, such as the ADCP measuring ocean currents and the echosounder - and which came from the animals themselves.

When they isolated the voices of the whales, the results were remarkable. In one recording, the humpback whale seen in the Icelandic fjord can be heard emitting powerful clicks and calls, echolocating to navigate and communicate. 

The sounds can be seen with colour variations on the spectrogram below. Click to play the video, and turn the sound up!

The pilot whales fill the water with whistles, visible as undulating patterns in the recording above; while clicks appear as sharp vertical lines. These recordings offer a vivid glimpse into the acoustic world that surrounds the ship, usually hidden from human ears.

By combining acoustic and visual sightings with environmental data, the researchers can explore how temperature influences the distribution of marine mammals.

The ship’s continuous measurements of sea surface temperature revealed distinct patterns on the leg from Iceland to Nice.

– Baleen whales like minks, and humpbacks are observed in lower temperatures, the team notes, while dolphins and sperm whales were mostly recorded in warmer waters of the Iberian margin and western Mediterranean.
Pilot whales, they add, were found across a wider temperature range, consistent with their global distribution.

Although the dataset is still growing, these early results suggest how environmental conditions influence where different species are likely to appear, and what scientists might expect to hear in future hydrophone recordings.

By combining direct observation and acoustic monitoring, Statsraad Lehmkuhl acts as a floating listening post for the ocean. From the Arctic waters north of Iceland to the temperate seas near southern Europe, the ship’s instruments and observers have revealed the ever changing soundscape of the sea.

This research not only helps scientists understand where marine mammals live, but also how they communicate and respond to changes in their environment. 

The work is not yet complete, as the expedition continues, every sighting, every sound, and every temperature reading adds another note to a growing symphony of the ocean.

What is now a large city of 2.6 million inhabitants - including its suburbs, began as a sawmill on Canada’s northwest coast as resent as 1867.

But people have lived in the Vancouver area for 8,000 to 10,000 years. 

The first Europeans arrived in this part of Canada only towards the end of the 18th century. In 1858, gold was discovered in a tributary of the Fraser River. More than 25,000 adventurous gold seekers came here, many of them from California, but most left again when there was no more gold to wash from the river gravel.

The city centre itself lies on a peninsula between Burrard Inlet to the north and the mouth of the Fraser River to the south, a natural place for a sawmill. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was extended to the peninsula in 1886, the city grew rapidly. 

It got the name Vancouver in 1886 too, after the Briton George Vancouver, who mapped the area in 1792.

To the west lies Vancouver Island, which protects the city from the Pacific Ocean and makes it an excellent harbour. Today, Vancouver is Canada’s most important port and one of the country’s largest industrial centers. 

The forest industry remains a key sector, along with mining, technology, culture, and tourism.

Less than half of Vancouver’s inhabitants have English or French as their mother tongue, which makes the city both unique and vibrant. People of British, German, and Chinese descent are the largest groups, but there are also many with roots in India and other Asian and European cultures.

Vancouver’s climate is shaped by its coastal location, with relatively cool summers and mild winters, though it is cold enough for snow to fall between November and March. 

Average maximum temperatures range from 6.6°C in December to 22.4°C in July. The city receives about 1,160 millimetres of precipitation per year, mostly between October and January.

All that rainfall and the mild winters create areas of temperate rainforest here, with conifer trees draped in moss and lichen.