Skip to main content
Expedition

Ocean Change 2024

Arved Fuchs sets sails and starts with the Dagmar Aaen towards Bear Island

Arved Fuchs and his sailing ship Dagmar Aaen are embarking on a new adventure for science. For the ninth year in a row, he is continuing his climate expedition series OCEAN CHANGE.

The destination of this year's leg is the Norwegian Sea and Bear Island between the North Cape and Spitsbergen in the Barents Sea (Arctic Ocean).

On the way into the unknown

The Dagmar Aaen will once again be used as a Ship of Opportunity (SOOP) as a hub for information transmission thanks to the latest technology. Meteorological and oceanographic data such as salinity, CO2 saturation and surface water temperature can be tracked freely in real time 24/7 on the beluga.geomar.de platform.

If the weather permits, contact with the German research ships Merian, Heincke and Polarstern is also planned at sea. With a crew of ten on board, the new leg of the OCEAN CHANGE will also be an exciting journey into the world of ocean research.

The "OCEAN CHANGE" initiative by Arved Fuchs Expeditions has been working intensively on the changes in the oceans and their effects on the climate and coastal landscapes since 2015.

The citizen science project aims to raise public awareness of the protection of the oceans and the global climate and at the same time to provide scientific institutes with important data from on board the Dagmar Aaen. In cooperation with the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and the Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, the collected data is transmitted live to the beluga.geomar.de  platform.
In addition, data is collected for the German Weather Service via satellite and measuring buoys (so-called drifters) are deployed.

The Crew
Live-Position
Logbook
Podcast
Live-Cam
Important points of the expedition

Ocean Change 2024

Live-Position

„Arved keeps an eye on water“

The EyeOnWater concept consists of an app and a website. With the app, you as a user can contribute to science and provide information about the water color of fresh and salt waters (lakes, rivers, coastal waters, seas and oceans) in your area or elsewhere. The measurement is sent to the central server, validated and saved, after which it is visible on the EyeOnWater website: www.eyeonwater.org

What do you measure? Water color is an indication of life (e.g. algae) in the water.
Simply download the app and take part in the citizen science project.

Arved keeps an eye on water – “you” keep an eye on water.

UN Ocean Decade

Arved Fuchs, ambassador of the German committee of the current UN Ocean Decade and contemporary witness of climate change, has dedicated his life to protecting the polar regions and the oceans for over 40 years.

He and his international crew have already covered more than 40,000 nautical miles around the Atlantic and the "Gulf Stream" (AMOC - Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) on the ice-going sailing cutter Dagmar Aaen on the "OCEAN CHANGE" series of expeditions.

"I have also traveled to the European North Sea several times – allthough not in the name of science. I am particularly looking forward to the often overlooked Bear Island: I last visited it in 1991 and am very excited to see what impression it makes today - a good thirty years later," says expedition leader Arved Fuchs of "OCEAN CHANGE 2024".

This year's leg is already the second "Dagmar Aaen" expedition, which will provide important data on the effects of the overheated Atlantic on the marine environment.

Goals

The high-tech measuring probes on board will enable us scientists to detect coastal and very local changes. It will also be very exciting to look at the route as a whole at the end of the expedition and to identify connections along the route.

The sea is a continuum - everything is connected to everything globally - unfortunately also the problematic man-made influences such as plastic, overheating, acidification or rising sea levels," adds the oceanographer Dr. Johannes Karstensen from GEOMAR in Kiel.

be involved

At the same time, videos and interviews from the adventurous life on board are sent to Arved Fuchs' professional shore crew.

Prepared for different playout channels, we provide you with exciting content here, via tiktok, Podcast,  facebook, twitter, insta und youtube.

All information about the expedition OCEAN CHANGE can be found here.

Return

The start of the 6th leg of the OCEAN CHANGE will be on June 18 in Kiel, the return of the "Dagmar Aaen" is planned for mid-September, depending on the weather.

Those interested can already mark the 25th and 26th of September in their calendars: Arved Fuchs will report to the media about the current measurements and the ongoing OCEAN CHANGE expedition as part of the Extreme Weather Congress in Hamburg.

More expeditions
Ocean Change 2023
Expedition archive