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- RV POSEIDON sets out on its 500th expedition
RV POSEIDON sets out on its 500th expedition
May 22, 2016
The call to “cast off” will be heard this Wednesday on the POSEIDON. Leaving from Catania Sicily, the 60-meter long research ship will set a course for the Mediterranean coast of France. Led by chief scientist Prof. Dr. Achim Kopf of MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, the team will spend twelve days studying the seafloor off Nice, collecting data relating to the threat of slope slides in the region.
This cruise also celebrates an extraordinary milestone, as it marks the 500th scientific expedition of the POSEIDON, which is based at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. “The POSEIDON is still an indispensable working platform for German marine science,” says GEOMAR’s coordinator of ships Dr. Klas Lackschewitz.
The POSEIDON was built from 1974 to 1976 at the Schichau Unterweser AG in Bremerhaven for the Kiel Institute for Oceanography (now GEOMAR). The Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) covered 90 per cent of the costs and the State of Schleswig-Holstein the other 10 per cent. At that time the ship represented the newest state in equipment and ship design.
The POSEIDON was originally conceived primarily for use in the North and Baltic Seas. In the early 1980s, however, it was converted for research in the deep-sea regions of the Atlantic. Recently the ship has been working almost exclusively in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has covered a total of 360,000 sea miles (almost 670,000 kilometers) in the service of scientific research.
The POSEIDON is equipped with numerous cranes and winches to help carry out the scientific work. For surveying and investigating the sea floor it has a modern sub-bottom profiler system with a sediment echo sounder. There are a total of five laboratory rooms available on board for scientists. “Over the years the equipment has been constantly upgraded and adapted to the latest technical standards,” explains Dr. Lackschewitz.
Although the POSEIDON is at home in Kiel, she is at the service of the entire German marine research community, as evidenced by the current commemorative cruise. The marine geologists from Bremen will deploy a number of tools including the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) MARUM-SEAL for precise mapping of the sea floor and gravity corers for retrieving samples. They will also carry out maintenance and expand an existing monitoring network on the sea floor.
“Off the coast of Nice, after strong rains or after the snow melts in the Alps, the Var River carries increased volumes of water into the Mediterranean, some of which also scours the area around Nice. These waters destabilize the deep-sea slope, which drops steeply down to a depth of 2000 meters directly off the coast,” explains chief scientist Achim Kopf. In 1979 a portion of the slope directly off Nice slumped downward and triggered a local tsunami.
“We want to improve our understanding of the dynamics behind these kinds of slumps in order to better assess the risks,” says the Bremen geologist. The work also serves as a preparatory step for an international drilling project of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), which will yield a geological section from the foothills of the French Alps to the Ligurian continental slope in the Mediterranean.
Although the POSEIDON is still a reliable workhorse for German marine research, the end of its service is in sight. “She turns 40 this year. That is very old for a ship. As a part of the modernization of the German research fleet, ship construction in 2020 will provide successors for the POSEIDON as well as for the METEOR, which is also well over 30 years old,” says Dr. Lackschewitz.
Contact:
Ulrike Prange
Science Communication
Phone: +49 421 218 65540
E-Mail: [Bitte aktivieren Sie Javascript]
This cruise also celebrates an extraordinary milestone, as it marks the 500th scientific expedition of the POSEIDON, which is based at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. “The POSEIDON is still an indispensable working platform for German marine science,” says GEOMAR’s coordinator of ships Dr. Klas Lackschewitz.
The POSEIDON was built from 1974 to 1976 at the Schichau Unterweser AG in Bremerhaven for the Kiel Institute for Oceanography (now GEOMAR). The Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) covered 90 per cent of the costs and the State of Schleswig-Holstein the other 10 per cent. At that time the ship represented the newest state in equipment and ship design.
The POSEIDON was originally conceived primarily for use in the North and Baltic Seas. In the early 1980s, however, it was converted for research in the deep-sea regions of the Atlantic. Recently the ship has been working almost exclusively in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has covered a total of 360,000 sea miles (almost 670,000 kilometers) in the service of scientific research.
The POSEIDON is equipped with numerous cranes and winches to help carry out the scientific work. For surveying and investigating the sea floor it has a modern sub-bottom profiler system with a sediment echo sounder. There are a total of five laboratory rooms available on board for scientists. “Over the years the equipment has been constantly upgraded and adapted to the latest technical standards,” explains Dr. Lackschewitz.
Although the POSEIDON is at home in Kiel, she is at the service of the entire German marine research community, as evidenced by the current commemorative cruise. The marine geologists from Bremen will deploy a number of tools including the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) MARUM-SEAL for precise mapping of the sea floor and gravity corers for retrieving samples. They will also carry out maintenance and expand an existing monitoring network on the sea floor.
“Off the coast of Nice, after strong rains or after the snow melts in the Alps, the Var River carries increased volumes of water into the Mediterranean, some of which also scours the area around Nice. These waters destabilize the deep-sea slope, which drops steeply down to a depth of 2000 meters directly off the coast,” explains chief scientist Achim Kopf. In 1979 a portion of the slope directly off Nice slumped downward and triggered a local tsunami.
“We want to improve our understanding of the dynamics behind these kinds of slumps in order to better assess the risks,” says the Bremen geologist. The work also serves as a preparatory step for an international drilling project of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), which will yield a geological section from the foothills of the French Alps to the Ligurian continental slope in the Mediterranean.
Although the POSEIDON is still a reliable workhorse for German marine research, the end of its service is in sight. “She turns 40 this year. That is very old for a ship. As a part of the modernization of the German research fleet, ship construction in 2020 will provide successors for the POSEIDON as well as for the METEOR, which is also well over 30 years old,” says Dr. Lackschewitz.
Contact:
Ulrike Prange
Science Communication
Phone: +49 421 218 65540
E-Mail: [Bitte aktivieren Sie Javascript]