Climate change, democracy and human rights, teaching resources.

 offers dialogue-based democracy and human rights education where they let students get to know their commitment by exploring issues related to discrimination, democracy, war and dehumanization, migration and human trafficking, prejudice and climate change.

Interview with Rafto Prize winner Nnimmo Bassey

The Rafto Foundation

I wouldn’t have been able to participate on my own, and I’m very grateful that Gorm wanted to keep me company, says grandpa Egon.

Sailing from Las Palmas to Curaçao are 109 trainees from ten different nations, spanning in age from 14 to 81 years. Amongst these, on the blue watch, we meet Gorm (27) and grandpa Egon (81).

After a life lived on the ocean, particularly in Voldsfjorden, Western Norway, Egon reluctantly sold his sailing boat a couple of years back. As age caught up with him, he wasn’t able to cope with the maintenance work any more. He’s been missing his boat very much.

- Visiting grandpa and grandma in the summertime was synonymous with sailing, tells Gorm, having the chance to sail the Atlantic Ocean together means a tremendous deal to us both.

To sooth Egon’s longing for the sea, his family arranged for him to take part in the One Ocean Expedition.

- I wouldn’t have been able to participate on my own and I’m very grateful that Gorm wanted to keep me company. It’s nice to create some new memories together, we’ve been sailing together for 27 years.

Egon describes that he has been touched by the enthusiasm for sailing amongst the crew and trainees on the ship. He would’ve liked to be able to contribute more with the sailing and on the watches.

- No one expects you to contribute more than you already do, Gorm ensures his grandfather, people are impressed by your participation on a voyage like this.

For Gorm, gathering on the fore castle singing shanties at sunset has been a highlight this far. For Egon, a tour of the chart house with Captain Seidl, sparked both interest and joy.

They are sailing together with Statsraad Lehmkuhl all the way to Havana, Cuba.

- We’re going to celebrate with a cigar when we get there, they agree.

Sailing with grandpa

Sustainable ocean - a writing assignment.

 has developed a writing assignment where the theme is sustainable oceans, with the One Ocean Expedition as a reference.

The target group for the assignment is students in upper secondary and high school, and it is easy for teachers to use.

The ambition of the UN Association of Norway is to develop more teaching programs in the coming months.

- It is positive that One Ocean lasts for a full 20 months. It gives us time to develop good plans and at the same time set up cooperation between the schools over time. We hope that this cooperation will continue, even after the One Ocean Expedition is completed in April 2023, says Gunvor Andresen, regional leader for the UN Association of Norway, South-West.

She is pleased that the voyage around the world makes it possible to have interdisciplinary teaching on topics such as sustainable development, global citizenship and democracy. The class can follow the expedition as a supplement to their classes, without spending much additional time.

- We will not achieve sustainable development if the students are not given the right tools. We want to use the One Ocean Expedition to achieve a deeper understanding of how important the ocean is and what role the global community plays in this context, says Andresen.

The expedition being international and part of the UN's decade for marine research is also positive. It gives teachers the opportunity to take an active role and participate in an international collaboration between schools.

For the UN Association of Norway, it is important that the expedition is based on marine research and focus on getting more knowledge on ocean life.

- No matter where you live in the world, we have a common link to the ocean resources. We need good research and good data. And, this is important, we are dependent on people having confidence in the research that is carried out, Andresen says.

She hopes that many schools will take advantage of the opportunity to take the expedition into
the teaching. Statsraad Lehmkuhl is a great symbol of the UN's sustainability goal number 17, cooperation to achieve the goals.

- On its journey across the globe, the ship connects people across national borders and cultures. And to sail the ship itself, everyone on board is completely dependent on each other. It is a good way of showing that a common, sustainable future requires that we can cooperate, says Andresen.

The UN Association of Norway works for increased knowledge about the UN and international issues in Norway. The target groups spans from the school system and the media, to the general public. On their website you will find over 50 current and engaging 

The United Nations Association of Norway

Imagine that you have been sailing the ocean for three weeks, in bad weather. The crew is exhausted, but the sails must be adjusted, again. How do you motivate them to grab the halyard and haul, in perfect coordination? 

You make them sing, a melody that motivates and in a rhythm that matches the job to be done. The shanty was created.

The shanty was first and foremost sung when working, not as entertainment on the free shift. The rhythm is crucial.

Some go at a steady pace, and are sung when turning the gait to pull up the anchor or when the pumps are worked, up and down. Others when the sails are set, haul by haul in a steady rhythm. If you need to tighten a sail, you need a strong and completely coordinated jerk. Then the shanty builds up to the jerk, which is triggered by an "o hoi!"


The name shanty probably originates from the French word for sing, "chantez".

The shanty is led by a lead singer, a shantyman. He often improvised the text, it was not until long after the sailing ship era was over that the shanties were written down.

Captain Seidl is very fond of shanties, and a skilled shantyman. On the way across the Atlantic, there is plenty of time to learn something new, and Seidl is happy to keep up the tradition. 

The sail needs tightening and the anchor is hauled from time to time, so why not do it to a genuine sailing ship shanty.

Shanty

... I am bound for south Australia!

The expedition’s first drifter has been launched.

The photos of co-sailors having a good time relaxing on the deck of Statsraad Lehmkuhl paints a slightly warped image. The voyage around the globe is a research expedition.

Two students are running scientific instruments, taking samples, and doing observations. They stay on board a month or two each, working hard every day.

Here you can read about the research program.

On this leg Nellie Wullenweber and Fabian Knoblauch are running the noisy lab down by the engine room. This week, a new assignment was added to their busy daily schedule: drifter dropping.

A drifter is a floating research device that is dropped into the ocean, and automatically transfers data to researchers on shore. The main purpose of the drifters is to report their positions, providing important information on the direction and speed of the ocean currents. The drifters send their position using a satellite uplink, and the researchers can follow their movements in real time.

The drifters also transfer the sea temperature and, some of them, barometric pressure.

The white and blue sphere at the right in the photo is the main part of the floater. The green fabric at the left will expand into a long tube, hanging below steadying the sphere.

Nellie and Fabian have been instructed to launch one drifter every 2 degrees longitude from 30 degrees west and all the way across the Atlantic ocean. The first drifter was launched October 12th. If the ship keeps up its current speed a drifter will be launched approximately every day, 13 in total.

The drifter experiment is administered by 

 at UC San Diego, and is part of NOAA’s Global Drifter Program.

- They are excited that we are able to launch their drifters, I don’t think they get that opportunity every day, comments Nellie.

One of the co-sailors, Gro van der Mehren, has brought her own drifter, as a favor to one of her colleagues at the Institute of Marine Research.

From the 1940s up until the mid 60s, Institute of Marine Research made simple drifters. The system was old school: A glass bottle with a letter inside telling where and when the bottle was tossed into the ocean, and what to do if you found one.

The drifter that van der Mehren has brought onboard is one of these original drifters, but with a modern twist: a GPS tracker has been attached to the bottle, reporting its position back to her colleague at Institute of Marine Research.

Gro has been instructed to toss it into the water together with one of the student’s 13 drifters, in a week or so.

- It will be interesting to compare the data from the two drifters, the modern one and the veteran one, says van der Mehren excitedly, will they follow the same pattern?

The position of Gro’s drifter will be made available to anyone interested at 

the Institute of Marine Sciences web page

The drifters will continue to report back for up to two years, before the batteries drain out. After that, they become ocean waste. This, of course, is a dilemma to the expedition as well as to the students onboard.

- It doesn’t feel good, but it would require way too much resources to collect them again. Hopefully, the benefits of the data from the drifters will outweigh the environmental cost, comments Nellie.

A new scientific instrument

There is a lot of activities on board the ship, also when Statsraad Lehmkuhl is at port. So far during the One Ocean Expedition, the ship has visited four European cities: La Coruña, Lisbon, Cadiz and Las Palmas. Kongsberg Maritime is one of the expedition´s partners who has used this opportunity well. 

- We see The One Ocean Expedition as an important communicator of knowledge about the ocean that we would like to be a part of, says Yrjar Garshol, Vice President Marketing at Kongsberg Maritime. 

In both Cadiz and Las Palmas, they invited guests to join their events on board. In addition to meeting the ship's captain, enjoying good food and drink in beautiful surroundings, the guests were also introduced to parts of the technical equipment that Kongsberg Maritime has installed on board the ship. 

- More than 80% of our business operations are linked to the ocean, and we take seriously the challenge of securing healthy oceans for the future. Our events on board Statsraad Lehmkuhl gives us a golden opportunity to tell people about how our technology can be used for greener operations. On this expedition, our technology is, among other things, a central part of the collection of research data. With our sensors and infrastructure, the ship can collect a large range of scientific data and make it available in real time throughout the voyage, says Garshol.

Kongsberg Maritime has plans for several more events during the expedition. In several ports, they will co-organize events in collaboration with some of One Oceans other 43 partners. 

Haakon Vatle, director of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl foundation and project manager for The One Ocean Expedition, is very pleased that both Kongsberg Maritime and other partners see the value of using the ship for events in the ports. 

- We want to emphasize the importance of the joint events that the partners carry out during the short time we are at port. These events provide a strong and positive attention that the individual partner will probably not be able to create on their own. they also contribute to strengthening the community internally in the expedition, says Vatle. 

Yrjar Garshol experiences that Kongsberg Maritime's participation in the expedition has generated a great deal of attention internally in his own organization. 

- Our value in this project is that we can relate our sustainability goals to specific measures that are highlighted through The One Ocean Expedition. Through profiling as a partner, we have achieved strong visibility for taking the UN's sustainability goals seriously. At the actual events in the ports, customer participation has exceeded our expectations, says Garshol.

Events in the ports

Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits Willemstad November 4-8 2021.

Willemstad is the capital of Curaçao, one of the islands in what was called the Netherlands Antilles until 2010. Now the island is an independent country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with the neighboring islands of Sint Maarten and Aruba, all located in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, and the Netherlands .

The islands have autonomy, but foreign affairs and defense policy is determined by the Netherlands.

The first inhabitants of Curaçao came to the islands from South America. The Spaniards occupied the island in 1499. For many years, Curaçao was the center of the European slave trade in the Caribbean. The island remained Spanish until 1634, when the Dutch West Indies Company took control, founded Willemstad, and made the city an important free-port.

Tourism, trade, shipping and oil activity are today the most important industries.



Normal maximum temperature in September: 31,1 ℃
Normal precipitation in September: 122,4 mm

Willemstad, Curaçao

Captain Seidl is worried, there is less life and more garbage in the ocean than before. 

It is a beautiful and peaceful morning on Statsraad Lehmkuhl. The ship has just passed the Cape Verde Islands and changed to a more westerly course towards Curaçao. The crew is doing maintenance, and the trainees are busy with sail handling. Captain Seidl is having a good time.

– The days become fantastically relaxing routines. As you get more and more into the rhythm of the ship you start to worry less and less about what’s around you. Many of us have come onboard after stressful days on shore, being bombarded with media all the time. Now we’re free from all of that. There is nobody texting us, telling us what they’re doing or what they’re having for dinner or when to meet them. Nobody’s expecting us to be in touch all the time. That liberty is fantastic.

Marcus A. Seidl has sailed the world’s oceans since he was five years old, with his family on his father’s self-built ship Illahee. He has been working at sea since 1980 and captain on Statsraad Lehmkuhl since 1994.

This is his 25th Atlantic crossing, his first was way back in 1973 on Illahee.

- I notice that the world has changed. There is less sea life and more garbage to be seen, and in general also the climate has changed a lot, Seidl says.

For the last 20 years he has taken cadets from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy across.

- Year by year, we see a slight change in the weather patterns. The wind patterns are not the same as they used to be 20 years ago, Seidl says.

Marcus Seidl shares his concern

Seidl is concerned, both as a seaman and on a personal level.

- Until a few years ago, you could use weather charts that were made in the 1960s and the 1970s. I find it very troubling that many of these don’t really match too much anymore. Another thing that worries me is the fact that we are finding garbage everywhere around us. We constantly get reports of people seeing something floating by in the water. Imagine then, how much garbage there must be in the ocean as a whole.

When Marc was a teenager, his father fought as an activist against the industrial whaling that nearly led to the extinction of the blue whale and sperm whale in the mid-last century. Marc’s father also taught him about the threat of oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, where One Ocean Expedition is now headed.

- This made me aware of the vulnerability of ocean life and nature in general, from a young age. Sadly, many have yet to learn to respect and care for our oceans and the environment.

Fishing from the ship is not like it used to be. A small dorado has been hauled on board, and the crew also managed to hook two yellowfin tunas - that got away. That’s all.

- Our student researchers are fishing every day using state of the art equipment. When we were doing these voyages - in this area especially, in the early 2000s, we were normally catching at least a few fish every week, Seidl says.

- We don’t see many birds around us either. We’re still not far from the coast, so that normally means there is not much sea life to be chased.

Seidl's ambition is that the One Ocean Expedition communicates his concerns, and promote a responsible way of travelling and interacting with the ocean.

- It is easier to get people’s attention when sounding the alarm from a 107-year-old barque than by writing a scientific article. We will try to tell our story in a manner that's not too technical or sterile. Our old lady will be a spokesperson for the oceans, he says.

Statsraad Lehmkuhl was one of the world’s first ever hybrid sailing ships - combining wind power with engine power. On the One Ocean Expedition, the crew is using the engine as little as possible. The route has been planned according to wind patterns, and the schedule allows waiting for fair wind if needed.

But, even a sailing ship needs electricity and there is always an engine running, powering generators creating power for ventilation, water filtration, lights and other equipment. Current consumption of fuel for the generators is ca. 3-500 litres per day.

- We’re constantly monitoring our energy consumption and try to keep our electricity usage at a minimum, says Seidl.

Seidl believes the future of seafaring is hybrid.

- There is lots of interesting research on vessels combining engine power with wind power, either in the form of huge single sails, kites, or rotating masts. Cargo ships don’t have the time for travelling via the traditional sailing ship routes like we do, but all ships will sometimes have a following wind, and this free energy should be taken advantage of, Seidl says.


– The ocean has changed

Erlend and Ragnhild left the ship in Las Palmas. The two new students had to sort out a problem staight away.

Students are running the scientific instruments, taking samples, and doing observations all the way around the globe. They stay on board a month or two each. 

Las Palmas was the end of the journey for Ragnhild Beck Hestness and Erlend Mundal. Before they disembarked, they spent a few days teaching the new couple the daily routines. Now Nellie Wullenweber and Fabian Knoblauch is running the noisy lab down by the engine room.

Nellie has a MSc in Marine Sciences and Resources from three different European universities. Fabian is working on his MSc in fluid mechanics at University of Oslo.

Nellie and Fabian

Nellie and Fabian ran into a problem already on their second day at sea; the sailors caught a fish.

Two fishing rods are mounted one on each side of the ship. They are part of the scientific program, and used by the students in a strict schedule, three times a day.

Doing ocean research, it is common to use how much fish you manage to catch as a measure of how much fish there are in the sea in total. The researchers call it "catch per unit effort". The unique thing here is that normal fishing rods are used, systematically around the globe - 55,000 nautical miles, 102,000 kilometres.

- What we manage to catch is exciting, but also to have a time series. How often do we get a fish on the hook, along the entire route, says Geir Huse at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway.

The catch is photographed, weighed and measured, and the ear stones are picked out. The ear stones are part of the balance organ of the fish. If you split them in two, you will see annual rings that tell how old the fish is, just like in trees.

It took more than a month before a fish finally found the lure irresistible, and took a bite. But not during the scientific fishing session.

Fishing is a nice pastime when at sea, and the crew borrows the fishing equipment from time to time. After two days at sea since leaving Las Palmas, the bosun Janus Larsen caught a beautiful small dorado during the crew’s 3PM coffee on the aft deck. 

The very first fish

The very first fish of the One Ocean Expedition! Understandably, the enthusiasm onboard Statsraad Lehmkuhl was vibrant.

The dorado, or mahi-mahi (also commonly known as dolphin fish), is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical, and subtropical waters across the globe. The species is easily recognized by its vivid yellow colour, when wet or in water. 

The dorado is a common food fish in Australia, USA and the Caribbean – but it’s also increasing in popularity amongst European consumers. A typical dorado weighs 7-13 kg and measures one meter in length. 

The fish caught by our crew members was a youngster, and let back into the sea.

– I hope it returns as a good meal for someone in the future, captain Seidl commented.

Since the small dorado was caught by one of the crew members, it was not examined in accordance with the guidelines for the ongoing research project. But an estimate of is weight, length and sex was however reported to the scientific team.

– The fishing project has not taken into account that the crew is doing a lot of fishing as well. We are in contact with Institute of Marine Research to create a system that handles this, says Nellie.

– An amendment of the system will result in data of two different qualities, adds Fabian. When we fish during our three daily sessions a lot of data is recorded: our exact position, the air and water temperature, local time and wind speed and direction. This data is not available when crew members fish sporadically. Therefore, these data sets need to be recorded separately. We will record all data available, but in two different data sets – one for systematic fishing and one for recreational fishing.

Nellie and Fabian had a meeting with the 2nd officer, to decide on a routine for reporting fish caught by the crew outside of the scientific fishing sessions.

– This time around we weren’t informed about the fish before it was being let back into the ocean. We would love to establish a communication routine that allows us to record as much data as possible in the future, comments Nellie.

Nellie and Fabian has moved into the lab

Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits Las Palmas September 30 - October 4 2021.

Las Palmas is located north on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands archipelago, just 100 km off the west coast of Africa.

Statsraad Lehmkuhl leaving Las Palmas October 4.

A thousand years before our era, the islands here were populated by what the Spaniards called Los Guanches. No one knows exactly where they came from, and when the Spaniards conquered the archipelago in the 15th century, the whole culture disappeared. The city of Las Palmas was founded in 1478, and became an important maritime city. It is perfectly located for sailing ships planning to ride across the Atlantic on the Northeast Passage wind.

Normal maximum temperature in October: 26.2 ℃
Normal precipitation in October: 16.1 mm

Las Palmas, Spain

Haakon Vatle is CEO of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation, and the architect behind One Ocean Expedition. It was his idea to rebuild the sailing ship into a floating university, and sail around the world.

Haakon began his career as sailor, and ended as director. He is actually a musician, and one of the few who has a master's degree in shanty singing. Here he tells Eli Kari Gjengedal how One Ocean Expedition came to be, and about life on board the sailing ship. NORWEGIAN ONLY

Eli Kari lurer på Haakon Vatle

The conversation is an episode in the podcast series "Eli Kari wonders", and was recorded live on October 1 as part of MCB Future week.

This is how One Ocean Expedition came to be

Students Ragnhild Beck Hestness and Erlend Mundal monitor the scientific instruments on board Statsraad Lehmkuhl, take samples of the seawater, and analyze. Their laboratory is actually a workshop.

It would have been nicer to work in a bright and pleasant room, but all the equipment is mounted down in the noise by the engine room. Sure, we are on board a sailing ship, but there are always machines running, to generate power, and keep the pumps working. Hearing protection is therefore mandatory equipment.

The noise is not the worst. The ship is never completely at rest, so Ragnhild can not just put down a small cup and expect it to stand still.

- The waves are a challenge, since everything must be done so accurately, she says.

The two collect water through an intake in the side of the ship, and filter it to collect microplastics. Microplastics are the tiny pieces that weather and wind break plastic waste into. You do not see them without a microscope, but they are scary nonetheless.

The plastic pieces are eaten by plankton in the ocean; single-celled organisms, small crustaceans, and larvae from larger organisms. They are food for other organisms, which in turn are eaten, and in this way birds, animals and fish higher up in the food chain can ingest scary amounts of plastic. We belong at the top of the food chain, and risk ending up eating our own plastic waste.

Erlend has been on board since Arendal, and believe he has seen a change along the way.

- A lot more water goes through the filter now that we are in the Atlantic Ocean compared to when we were in the English Channel. It may indicate less microplastic in the sea here?

It will be exciting to see. The filters are frozen and sent back to Norway, where they will be analyzed.

Ragnhild and Erlend also extract eDNA from the seawater; e for environmental DNA.

DNA is genetic material, and unique to the organism it comes from. Some DNA from everything that lives in the ocean floats around, and this is what the students collect in their filters. The contents of the filter are checked against large databases, and results in a list of what lives in the water the sample is taken from.

- It is a complicated procedure, says Ragnhild. We extract water, which is first passed through a filter. Then we dissolve the filter and process it in different solutions, before it is finally analyzed in a PCR machine.

Surely PCR sounds familiar? It is the same type of machine used for corona testing.

Laboratoriet ved maskinrommet

The assignment is over for Ragnhild and Erlend when the ship arrives in Las Palmas. Then two new students takes over the lab.

The first days in port all four are on board. Training the newcomers is provided by Ragnhild and Erlend, and it is an important part of the job. Getting a laboratory to work down in a workshop requires a lot of improvisation, and that experience is important to pass on.

– The waves are a challenge

Long voyages can easily become monotonous, and a small celebration from time to time is always nice. It's well known that those who pass the equator line for the first time get baptised by King Neptune. The Dutch have another tradition too.

On the leg from Cadiz to Las Palmas it is cadets from the Dutch Naval Academy that haul ropes and adjust sails on board the Statsraad Lehmkuhl. The effort is high, and the precision impressive.

The Naval Academy has an old tradition. When the cadets are halfway on a long voyage, they must pass an exam.

– It is a celebration game, says Sergeant Hajo van der Veen. A funny tradition when you are out at sea for a long time.

The cadets are divided into groups, and given tasks about ropes and sail handling. The winners are awarded a skill badge which is proudly worn on the uniform.

Afterwards, the youngest cadet exchanges rank with the commanding officer. The officer becomes a private, and the private a boss. The two sit down on a plank that is hung up over a pool, and cut the plank with a hand saw until both splashes into the pool, to great cheers from the rest.

Snart våte // Soon to be soaked

Even though it is now wet, it is the cadet who is wearing the commander's uniform, and the party ends with the officer being commanded around the deck. More great cheers

An old tradition

Statsraad Lehmkuhl is sailing up agains the wind, and have to  zigzag forward.

– Nice, smiles bosun Jo Leif Strønen.

With the wind blowing little aft across, at an angle from behind, both sailboats and sailing ships are fastest. The wind fills all sails, and the course can be set straight towards the next port. 

But the wind can be quarrelsome. The last few days, Statsraad Lehmkuhl has been sailing up agains the wind, and have to zig-zag forward. For each zig and each zag, the sails are shifted over to the other side, in sync with the ship turning. This is called tacking.

- We turn the ship straight into the wind, and then out again, Strønen explains.

In a modern sailboat tacking is done in seconds. This is not the case with a sailing ship.

- It is one of the more complicated maneuvers you can do with a sailing ship. Many tasks must be performed simultaneously. All the sails are moved, some are taken down, and some must be slackened. We handle almost all the ropes we have on board, says Strønen.

- If the wind is good, a tack takes two to five minutes. In very light wind, it can take a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes before we sail on a new tack.

Only muscle power is used, and everything must be done in the right order, completely coordinated. That's how the shanty songs were made, they make it easier to "keep pace" when ten sailors are pulling the same rope. 

- So yesterday it took a little longer than we had expected. The wind was nice in the morning, but when we were ready to turn, it calmed down a bit. So the waves pushed us back when we tried to sneak through the wind, Strønen says.

Several tricks are used when the ropes are tightened, only hauling at the end of the rope will not do. No knots are tied. The ropes are secured by crossing them over belaying pins, the wooden bolts on the side of the ship. Then the ropes are quick to loosen again.

You can watch the tack Strønen talks about in the video below.

Stagvending

It takes time to zig-zag along, but that does not bother Strønen.

- We have good margins, so in head-wind we tack, and if the wind settles completely, then we simply lay waiting. I'm very happy about having plenty of time, it lets us use the sails all the time.

Slow, but nice

Friday Statsraad Lehmkuhl slowed to a full stop, and lay still for a couple of hours.

- We heaved to today, Captain Jens Joachim Hiorth wrote in his daily report.

What he ordered was to turn the sails so that they braked Statsraad Lehmkuhl up, and kept the ship still against the wind. Two instruments were to be fired several hundred meters into the depths.

The ship is equipped with instruments that take samples of the water automatically around the clock. The content of CO2 and oxygen, the amount of phytoplankton, temperature, and salinity are measured once a minute. 

These samples are taken from an intake on the side of the ship, and thus only tell something about the conditions just below the sea surface. The researchers will investigate the depths as well, and on Friday a special sampler was used for the first time.

A metal frame with a white and red plastic cylinder in the middle was hooked onto a 750 meter long line, and dropped to the bottom. The instrument is called CTD, which stands for conductivity, temperature and depth.

Conductivity tells how well the water conducts electricity, and is a way of measuring salinity. The pressure tells how deep down the instrument is at all times. The temperature is recorded all the way, and is used together with salinity and pressure to calculate the density of the water, or the weight if you will. The instrument also measures how much light from the surface there is left.

The information is stored in the instrument, and loaded into the PC and sent ashore after the instrument has been hoisted back on board.

- It is cool that we can see all the graphs immediately, says Erlend Mundal, one of the two students responsible for the sampling.

In the video below you see the instrument being used. When the bottom is reached, the line is connected to a counter, which measures how much line that is hauled in using a power block.

The CTD in use

After the CTD is back on board the ship, a plankton net is attached to the line. The net is lowered to 200 meters and slowly hauled back. The plankton caught the net collects in a container at the end. The contents of the container is preserved on alcohol, and taken back to scientists on land.

The guard teams on board have different tasks. One of them is to stand buoy guard; to watch and cry out if anyone should fall overboard. You quickly disappear in sight in the waves out at sea, so this is an important job. 

The buoy guard also keeps the garbage diary. Here entries of plastic garbage seen floating around is noted, along with time and direction.

Heave to

Seasickness is a horrible experience. You get nauseous and miserable, you vomit, and have more than enough just taking care of yourself.

Ingrid Wollberg, the content producer on board Statsraad Lehmkuhl, has suffered a few rounds of nausea and misery.

Fortunately, it is possible to prevent seasickness from ruining the voyage completely.

Ingrid sliter litt med sjøsyke

We become seasick because the body gets confused. The balance organ in the inner ear consists of three fluid-filled tubes. The tubes are lined with microscopic hairs that perceive movement, and send signals on to the brain.

The balance organ enables us to keep our eyes fixed even when we move our heads. But in waves it screws up. The balance organ gives signals that do not match what the eyes see, the brain becomes confused, and we get sick.

Or to be precise - some of us gets sick. Some are never seasick. Most of us gets over it after a while, and others are completely wiped out until they return to dry land.

You may have spent a lot of time in boats without getting sick, but you will not know for sure until you get out to the open ocean. Beneath the waves on top, sea swells are rolling. The swells are so long that you hardly notice them, even the ones a few meters high. You are just slowly lifted up ... and then down again.

In her video Ingrid admits that she can't sit below deck and work.

– To sit and look into the PC-screen editing videos, is the worst.

No wonder, that's when the eyes and the balance organs in the ear are really fighting. 

– Stay on deck, be active, and don't worry so much about seasickness, Ingrid encourages.

A good advice: Do as Ingrid does, stay on deck. There you can watch the waves and move with the boat. Don't fight it, trying to "stabilize the world". 

All articles

The Rafto Foundation

Sailing with grandpa

The United Nations Association of Norway

... I am bound for south Australia!

A new scientific instrument

Events in the ports

Willemstad, Curaçao

– The ocean has changed

Nellie and Fabian has moved into the lab

Las Palmas, Spain

This is how One Ocean Expedition came to be

– The waves are a challenge

An old tradition

Slow, but nice

Heave to

How to avoid getting seasick

A new partner for Erlend

The first analyzes are ready

This is why sailing is smart

La Coruña, Spain

Lisbon, Portugal

Cádiz, Spain

A lot to learn for a fresh sailor

Sailing south, cycling home

Research using earmuffs and fishing rods

An old dream

A new friendship

Finally - open sea

The students are on board

First night on deck

Arendal - where the adventure begins

Risk assessments - Covid-19

Around Cape Horn – the ultimate adventure for sailors!

Statsraad Lehmkuhl becomes a research vessel

One Ocean Expedition