After the Mertz stopover, ACE expedition reached the Balleny archipelago, a serie of uninhabited volcanic islands. Realizing that their is no good map of the Balleny Islands, David Walton proposed a new mission for ACE: Create a topographic map of the islands Young Buckle and Sabrina. Therefore, the media team […]

By Christel Hassler, Professor of marine and lake biogeochemistry, University of Geneva. Principal investigator, ACE project “Biodiversity and isolation of bacteria and viruses in contrasted regions from the Southern Ocean”.     During this second leg, oceanographers have sampled highly contrasted water ranging from highly productive polynya waters in the […]

By Eric Hoesli, EPFL professor Par Eric Hoesli, professeur à l’EPFL On board, it’s difficult not to notice Kristina, one of the young members of the Russian crew. She’s covered from head to toe in tattoos. Only her face, with its fine features and her large, delicately outlined eyes, shows […]

Among the 22 scientific projects carried out during the expedition, one focuses on waves. It aims at collecting an uninterrupted set of wind, wave, and surface current data throughout the entire expedition. Alessandro Toffoli, associate professor at the University of Melbourne and ocean wave expert, explains the project’s goals to […]

By Samuel Jaccard, geologist and member of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, taking part in  the ACE project  Understanding the plankton’s strategy to survive.       We’re now stationed at Mertz Glacier (67°S, 145°E). The ship is literally docked against the glacier, […]

By Samuel Jaccard, geologist and member of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, taking part in  the ACE project  Understanding the plankton’s strategy to survive.         Operations at sea for the oceanography teams are quite intense at the moment as the […]

By Samuel Jaccard, geologist and member of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, taking part in  the ACE project  Understanding the plankton’s strategy to survive.         We’re now approaching Mertz Glacier, where we will be stopping for at least four days. […]

C’est le départ. Le 22 Janvier 2017 à 23h, l’Akademik Treshnikov quitte le port de Hobart. L’Aurora Australis, brise-glace de recherche basé à Hobart, est amarré à côté du navire Russe. Il revient de l’Antarctique et semble nous souhaiter bonne chance… Les passagers apprécient l’air frais sur le pont supérieur […]

©F. Brucker, Parafilms/EPFL.