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 Cartagena, Columbia on January 16 and is now at sea en route to Baltimore, USA, arriving January 31. Over the course of a year, the expedition will visit 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 Baltimore

Follow our journey

The more than 100-year-old Statsraad Lehmkuhl is packed with modern technology. Here’s how the ship finds its way across the ocean.

Navigating using satellites

In the wake of Statsraad Lehmkuhl’s first One Ocean Expedition, a long list of scientific articles is now emerging. 

More on ocean research during the 2020-23 One Ocean Expedition

What the scientists discovered

Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits Baltimore, January 31 - February 5, 2026

Baltimore, USA

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 

Vancouver, Canada

Seattle, USA

San Francisco, USA

San Diego, USA

Ensenada, Mexico

La Paz, Mexico

Herradura, Costa Rica

Cartagena, Columbia

Herradura, Costa Rica - Panama Canal

Norfolk, USA

Cádiz, Spain

Brest, France 

Dublin, Ireland

Bergen, Norway

Thirty years ago, we had to unfold a paper map to find our way, and at sea or in the mountains the compass had to come out as well. Tricky, and not very efficient.

Today, it’s enough to pull out your mobile phone. It knows exactly where you are and shows you how to get to your destination. That’s because there’s a receiver inside it, a tiny device that picks up signals from a network of satellites 20,000 kilometres above us. We are used to calling it GPS, but the correct term is GNSS – Global Navigation Satellite System. 

We'll stick to GPS, no longer one, but several systems.

It all began with the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System, developed by the United States. The first of the 30 satellites in the system was launched in 1978, and the last in 1994. Since then, the satellites have been replaced several times.

The system was originally developed for military use. Only in 1983 did civilians gain access. During the first years, the Americans deliberately added an error to reduce the accuracy of civilian receivers from about 10 metres to 100 metres. This limitation was removed in the year 2000.

Russia has its own military system, GLONASS, which is also open for civilian use. China has BeiDou, and Europe has Galileo.

In 2016 Galileo entered operation, and Europe finally became completely independent of military satellite systems. Galileo is entirely civilian, owned by the EU and ESA.

Galileo offers an accuracy of down to one metre - more precise than both GPS and GLONASS, especially at northern latitudes. Galileo can also work together with the other systems, providing even greater accuracy.

The first of the 30 Galileo satellites was launched in 2011, and the last in 2020. 

Satellite navigation is both very simple - and very complex.

Do you remember sine and cosine from school? That you can find the length of the sides of a triangle if you know one side and two angles?

All surveying is based on that principle: creating a network of triangles and using them to locate new points.

All countries has been covered by such a triangulation network for many years. You’ve probably seen the markers on hilltops and ridges. To find your position using them, you’d need an instrument that can measure distances and angles. You must have clear sight from one marker to the next, and you must be able to calculate.

GPS moved this network of triangles into space. The satellites replace the markers on the mountaintops.

The satellites continuously transmit information about their position, together with an exact timestamp. The receiver in your phone, car, or boat picks up the signals and measures how long they take to arrive. That time delay is used to calculate the distance to each satellite.

This requires an extremely accurate clock and advanced signal processing, but the rest is just basic school geometry.

Three satellites are enough to calculate your position; four if you also want to know your altitude above sea level. The more satellites the receiver can connect to, the higher the accuracy. In practice, receivers use signals from at least four satellites at a time.

Knowing only your latitude and longitude doesn’t help much. Coordinates show your precise position, but they don’t really tell you where you are - so to speak. We still need a map.

That’s why most GNSS receivers are integrated with a digital map system. It shows where you are, where you’ve been, and how to navigate to where you want to go.

Smart, but don’t throw away your paper maps. If your phone runs out of power or you lose contact with the satellites, having a paper map and a compass could save your life in the mountains or at sea.

This is the reason the chart room aboard Statsraad Lehmkuhl - packed with electronic chart displays - also have paper charts and a logbook where the ship’s position is recorded.

We have studied the ocean for more than 100 years, yet there is still much we do not know. During the One Ocean Expedition 2021–23, researchers both on board and on land worked to close some of these knowledge gaps.

During the circumnavigation, Statsraad Lehmkuhl crossed vast ocean regions and visited locations rarely reached by research vessels. The expedition was unique. 

Using the same ship and the same sampling methods throughout the entire voyage provided researchers with a coherent, global dataset. This made it possible to link observations that had previously been collected sporadically, using different platforms and methods.

Statsraad Lehmkuhl was not built as a research vessel, but before departure it was equipped with state-of-the-art scientific instruments. The most important tools were sensors that collected data continuously throughout the voyage: an echosounder, a hydrophone, an autonomous pCO₂ instrument, and systems that sampled and analysed seawater taken in through an inlet in the hull - to measure environmental DNA and microplastics.

The goal of the data collection was to improve understanding of the state of the world’s oceans, with a particular focus on the distribution and diversity of organisms, environmental status, climate, and human pressures on marine ecosystems. Key questions included:

• How do biodiversity and indicators of human pressure vary across the world’s oceans?
• What is the distribution and vertical movement of mesopelagic sound-scattering layers globally?
• What characterizes the physical conditions and water masses encountered during the voyage, and can recurring phenomena such as internal waves and mesoscale eddies be detected?
• How much CO₂ does the ocean absorb from the atmosphere, how does this uptake vary in space and time, and how does it affect ocean acidification?
• How well do in situ observations correspond with satellite measurements of physical and chemical parameters?
• How well do observations, models, and satellite data align, and can these measurements be used to improve weather and ocean forecasting?

Analysing the large volumes of data has taken time, but the list of scientific articles and master’s theses is now extensive. Below are references to articles and Master thesis, published as of January 2026.

Is your publication missing from the list? Please inform us by email at  science@ship.lehmkuhl.no.

Altiparmaki, O., Breivik, Ø., Aouf, L., Bohlinger, P., Johannessen, J.A., Collard, F., Donlon, C., Hope, G., Visser, P.N.A.M., Naeije, M., 2024.

 Influence of Ocean Currents on Wave Modeling and Satellite Observations: Insights From the One Ocean Expedition. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 129, e2024JC021581. 

Hasselberg, A.E., Frøyland, L., Kögel, T., Markhus, M.W., Plata, J., van der Meeren, T., Sørhus, E., Sanden, M., Lunestad, B.T., Hannisdal, R., Olsen, E., 2024.

 Maximizing the potential of sustainable aquatic food systems for global food security: key opportunities and challenges. Front. Ocean Sustain. 2. 

Benetti, M., Sveinbjörnsdóttir, A.E., Ólafsdóttir, R., Leng, M.J., Arrowsmith, C., Debondt, K., Fripiat, F., Aloisi, G., 2017.

 Inter-comparison of salt effect correction for δ18O and δ2H measurements in seawater by CRDS and IRMS using the gas-H2O equilibration method. Marine Chemistry 194, 114–123. 

 Microplastic in subsurface water in the South Pacific Ocean (Master thesis). The University of Bergen.

Huse, G., Batten, S., Schmidt, J., Isensee, K., Bahri, T., Skern-Mauritzen, M., Chiba, S., Haugan, P., 2025.

 Making ocean climate effects studies matter to society. ICES Journal of Marine Science 82, fsae200. 

Huse, G., Baussant, T., Becker, M., Biuw, M., Bødtker, G., Cook, J., Gomiero, A., Grøsvik, B.E., Handegard, N.O., Hestnes, A.J., Hole, L.R., Husson, B., Jaccard, P.F., Johannessen, J.A., Krolicka, A., Lien, V.S., Lindemann, C., Olsen, A., Renner, A., Lid, S.R., Steen-Larsen, H.C., Strand, E., Westgaard, J.-I., Pedersen, G., 2023.

 The One Ocean Expedition: Science and Sailing for the Ocean We Want. The One Ocean Expedition: Science and Sailing for the Ocean We Want.

 Measurement of Wave Properties with a Custom Built Sensor System as Part of the One Ocean Expedition (2021-2023): Technical Aspects and Post Processing of Field Data (Master thesis).


Lee, M.-C., Lin, J.-C., 2023. RoLA: A Real-Time Online Lightweight Anomaly Detection System for Multivariate Time Series. 


Lund, M.N., 2022. Features impacting the mesopelagic layer in the ocean: a machine learning-based approach (Master thesis). The University of Bergen.
Moerman, B., Breivik, Ø., Hole, L.R., Hope, G., Johannesen, J.A., Rabault, J., 2024. An Analysis on Openmetbuoy-V2021 Drifter In-Situ Data Andlagrangian Trajectory Simulations in the Agulhas Current System. 


Nakanowatari, T., Nakamura, T., Mitsudera, H., Nishioka, J., Nishikawa, H., Kuroda, H., Uchimoto, K., 2025. Decadal-scale reduction in net primary production in the western subarctic North Pacific: impact of lateral transport of dissolved iron from the Sea of Okhotsk. Environ. Res. Lett. 20, 054027. 


Ølberg, J.T., 2023. Wave Measurements Using Ship Mounted Sensors as part of the One Ocean Expedition (Master thesis). The University of Bergen.


Ølberg, J.T., Bohlinger, P., Breivik, Ø., Christensen, K.H., Furevik, B.R., Hole, L.R., Hope, G., Jensen, A., Knoblauch, F., Nguyen, N.-T., Rabault, J., 2024. Wave measurements using open source ship mounted ultrasonic altimeter and motion correction system during the one ocean circumnavigation. Ocean Engineering 292, 116586. 


Pykälä, T.-M., 2023. More-than-human agency on the Pacific Ocean (Master thesis). UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

What is now Baltimore had no permanent settlement before Europeans arrived in the 1700s. Indigenous peoples used the areas inside the Chesapeake Bay as hunting grounds.

British immigrants arrived in 1634, but it was not until after 1706 - when a port for exporting tobacco was established, that the city began to take shape. Growth was slow at first. In 1752, the town consisted of just 27 houses, including a church and two taverns.

Then things accelerated. Baltimore became the county seat and gained a courthouse, the first postal system in the United States, its own water company, and gas-powered street lighting was installed as early as 1816. By 1820, the population had risen to 60,000, and the economy shifted from tobacco production to sawmills, shipbuilding, and textile manufacturing.

Maryland was a slave state and sided with the South during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. The years that followed were also marked by segregation between white and Black residents.

When Baltimore was rebuilt after a major fire destroyed parts of the city in 1904, a law was passed that prevented Black residents from settling in certain areas.

Baltimore had nearly one million inhabitants in the 1960s. From the 1970s onward, many shipyards and other industrial jobs were shut down. At the same time, banks were reluctant to issue loans to Black residents, and inner-city neighborhoods fell into decline.

Those who could afford it moved to suburbs outside the city.

Today, the population has fallen to about 568,000, more than 60 percent of whom are African American.

Around one third of the workforce is employed in low-paid service jobs, but there are signs of improvement. The port is now among the ten largest in the United States, and employment in science, technology, and engineering is growing.

Winters in Baltimore are cool, with temperatures around 10°C from November to March, and freezing temperatures and snow are not uncommon. Summers are warm and humid, with temperatures around 30°C in June, July, and August.

Baltimore receives 1,143 mm of precipitation annually, fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, though with slightly higher rainfall in summer.

Normal maximum temperature in February: 8.0 °C
Normal precipitation in February: 74 mm