The media team was invited on board to cover the expedition and science as independent observers. The main media project was to gather interviews and other video material for a 30-minute TV documentary on the Continental Shelf Project of the Kingdom of Denmark.
The aim of this project is to better understand the structure and function of the plankton communities in the Arctic Ocean, and how they are related to various water masses and currents. A decrease in the extent of the Arctic sea ice is altering the water balance in, for example, the North Atlantic.
Very little is known about the microbial communities that dominate the Arctic sea ice habitat. They live in brackish water channels inside the sea ice and regulate nutrient fluxes to the marine food web beneath the ice and also, indirectly, to mammals and birds living on the ice.
How and why has Arctic sea ice cover varied in the recent geologic past? In the project Palaeoceanography of the Arctic – Water Masses, Sea Ice, and Sediments (PAWS), we utilise the new sea ice proxy IP25, a biomarker from ice algae, together with other proxy data, to study the variability in sea ice cover over time.
Oden is equipped with a multibeam echo sounder and a chirp sonar (sub-bottom profiler). During the LOMROG III cruise, Oden travelled a total of 3,672 nautical miles. Multibeam bathymetric as well as sub-bottom profiler data were recorded continuously along the ship’s track.
Acquisition of seismic data in the Amundsen Basin and on the Eastern flanks of the Lomonosov Ridge was the second priority of the LOMROG III cruise. During the LOMROG III cruise, a total of 498 km of seismic data were acquired. Furthermore, 63 sonobuoys were deployed of which 59 were transmitting data back to the ship.
Gravity data were collected continuously during LOMROG III with the gravimeter installed on board Oden, supplemented by 77 gravity readings on the ice using a land gravimeter.
Rock samples dredged from the Lomonosov Ridge could yield valuable information on the origin of the ridge and could strengthen the argument for a natural prolongation of the Canadian–Greenland Shelf onto the ridge.
The oceanographic programme carried out during the cruise includes the collection of water column profiles with conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) data and water sampling. A total of 29 ice stations were completed successfully in four hours on the ice at each station.
The contribution of ice algae to the global environment is difficult to estimate, but they may be responsible for up to 5% of all photosynthesis and primary production. During the LOMROG III cruise we wanted to determine gradients in algal biomass and adaptation to light quantity and quality along the surface light transect of the Arctic Ocean.
The aim of this project was to collect samples from hitherto underexplored areas in the Arctic Ocean, focusing on novel gram-positive spore-forming bacteria. The bioactive potential of these bacteria will be investigated, with a focus on antibiosis.
The aim of the sea ice temperature project conducted during the cruise was to collect a large dataset capturing the influence of and correlation between actual snow and ice temperatures, satellite measurements, and the variables that influence these measurements.
LOMROG III was the last cruise to the area north of Greenland as part of the Continental Shelf Project of the Kingdom of Denmark and therefore represents the end of the very successful cooperation between the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat.
