Oden battles heavy ice during the GEOEO expedition
A week ago Oden departed from the Victoria Fjord in Northern Greenland, aiming to go east around the northern tip of Greenland and arrive in Longyearbyen on Svalbard.
September 19, 2024, Johan Nilsson
Some one-hundred-fifty years after Nansen’s Arctic Ocean expedition with Fram, no ship has yet navigated through this passage into the Arctic Ocean via the Lincoln Sea. Oceanographically, it is an unexplored area where the Transpolar Drift deposits waters and sea ice from a large swath of the Arctic Ocean onto the continental shelf.
However, not even Oden could force through the extremely severe multi-year sea ice in the eastern Lincoln Sea. After breaking ice for 24 hours and only getting about 20 km in the general right direction using all of Oden’s four engines, the captain and the crew decided that it was not feasible to continue towards Svalbard. After we turned around, we have slowly worked our way westward through heavy ice, stopping to make a range of observations.
The change of plans, although forced upon us by the ice, has allowed us to explore the western Lincoln Sea; an area where hardly any scientific observations have been taken before. We will stop for a shorter measurement campaign in the Petermann Fjord on our way to Pituffik in Northwestern Greenland, from where we began our journey five weeks ago.
Last updated: September 20, 2024
Source: MISU