Smoked, dried seacucumbers are ‘the gold from the sea’ in Papua. They do not look the part: they resemble black crumpled socks and taste like old clams. But the Chinese use them as a medicine to speed up recovery from surgery. So Papuans harvest the sea cucumbers not for eating…
– By : Steve Geelhoed – Off survey flight The sun shines over northern Scotland. We are in our hotel in Inverness though. Off effort. Validating data from the last three days of surveying. The wind is too strong to survey. The last days the weather was suitable enough to…
– By: Isolde Puts – The polar days in Ny-Ålesund passed by very fast. The focus during the last few days were on finishing the experiments, cleaning up in the labs, and storing our research equipment. And now we’re back home. Midsummer celebration at Ny-Ålesund Luckily I could celebrate the ending…
– By: Tinka Murk – Socks with holes Life at research station Ny-Ålesund differs a lot from life in the Netherlands. I feel at home quite easily. Not only because everybody here speaks Norwegian to me (I guess I look quite Norwegian), but also because life is quite easy going…
– By Meike Scheidat – The survey set-up for cetacean viewing On Monday all teams assembled at their respective bases, which are spread out across Atlantic Europe from northern Norway to Portugal. This first day was spent on training and doing some “dry runs” with the equipment. Surveys are run…
– By: Steve Geelhoed – Flight weather Five days ago aerial team III gathered in Inverness, Scotland. Leo, the pilot, flew in from Liverpool, Linn from Berlin via Amsterdam where she met Steve. Marie (see picture) came from Svalbard via Oslo and London. Typical Scottish weather welcomed us. Thus providing…
– By Meike Scheidat, aerial survey co-ordinator – The aerial survey component of the SCANS-III survey officially started on 27 June! A lot of people have worked towards this moment and the last weeks and months were filled with intense preparations. Getting equipment ready, finalizing transect lines & protocols, designating…
– By: Martine van den Heuvel-Greve – VIP guests The research station of Ny-Ålesund is a popular place for visiting VIP s. Recently Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and our minister of Foreign Affairs, Bert Koenders, visited Ny-Ålesund. The place is popular because many nations have their own…
– By: Martine van den Heuvel-Greve – Resembling an oil spill We use small crustaceans to test their sensitivity to oil, when dissolved in water, resembling an oil spill at sea. We conducted similar tests in the Netherlands with related Dutch species. The results will tell us whether the tests…
– By: Tinka Murk – The sediment sampler During 2 sampling trips we had the opportunity to collect some deep (300 m) and shallow (30 m) sediment samples with a Van Veen – sampler. With its ‘big mouth’ opened the sampler is lowered. It closes as soon as it bumps…