PolarFront vista
PolarFront vista

PolarFront

Dato 1. november 2021 12:00 – 31. desember 2024 11:00

Sted Barents Sea Polar Front

Summary

PolarFront is an open science project, designed to collect reference data on distribution, productivity, and food-web dynamics in the European polar front area, in the period 2021–2024.

The Barents Sea polar front, which often matches the southern extent of the seasonal ice zone, is known to be of particular importance for primary production, spawning, and feeding by various components of the pelagic ecosystem.

Using shipboard sampling and Akvaplan-niva's fleet of autonomous sampling platforms, the project will investigate this ecosystem during three seasons, including the poorly known Polar Night.

Open science

PolarFront is based on open science principles, with a commitment to publish all research articles and datasets as open access.

Data is managed in accordance with FAIR principles and W3C's best practices for publishing data on the web.

Industry and management end-user groups are integrated into the project to assure that scientific results have solid impact.

All of the project's datasets, presentations and publications are published continuously on Zenodo.

Funding

The project receives public funding from the Research Council of Norway, grant 326635 and has also received contributions from two partner petroleum companies, and logistical support from UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the EU project BioGlider.

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Relatert innhold

  • Sampling around the Polar Front is not without danger. (Photo: Nathalie Morata)

    Akvaplan-niva leading new project on Polar Front ecology

    Akvaplan-niva has been awarded funding from the Research Council of Norway to study the role of the Polar Front in ecosystem structure and function in the western Barents Sea. The project has contributions from two petroleum companies, and logistical support from UiT The Arctic University of Norway and an EU project (BioGlider). The project period is November 2021 – December 2024.
    The Barents S

  • August 2023 PolarFront cruise team in front of the research vessel Helmer Hanssen. Frida Cnossen from Akvaplan-niva participated in the cruise but is missing from the picture (Photo: Njaal Heddle)

    Multi-seasonal and high-resolution studies of the Polar Front

    Environmentally sustainable industry operations require comprehensive ecosystem understanding, safe and effective monitoring technologies, and a reliable data archive for assessing risk and driving management strategies. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in sensitive Arctic regions where the knowledge base is incomplete, operational risk is high, and databases are fragmented and not user-f

  • Unveiling the mysteries of the Barents Sea polar front

    Unveiling the mysteries of the Barents Sea polar front

    The Polar Front project (2021-2024) is heading towards the polar front of the Barents Sea with the research vessel R/V Helmer Hanssen. The project will investigate the pelagic ecosystem using technologies like remotely controlled gliders alongside tradition sampling methods from the research vessel.

    R/V Helmer Hanssen. Photo: UiT

    We know the polar front is sensitive to changes,

  • RV Helmer Hanssen before departure from Tromsø (Photo: Frida Cnossen)

    To the Polar Front in the Polar Night

    After successful cruises to the Polar Front region in May 2021 and May 2022, a consortium of researchers this week left Tromsø aboard the UiT research vessel Helmer Hanssen to the Polar Front region of the western Barents Sea. This cruise is one of the very few exploring pelagic ecosystem dynamics during the Polar Night, a period rarely studied in the open Barents Sea. Apart from near-total darkne

  • Photo: Pierre Priou/Akvaplan-niva

    Akvaplan-niva presents scientific use of biogliders at International Underwater Glider Conference

    Zooplankton are central components of marine food webs, being both prey and predators and modulating biogeochemical cycles, including carbon transport from the ocean's surface down to the deep sea. It is thus critical to gather knowledge on their distribution, species composition, and behaviour. Now scientists take autonomous vehicles equipped with advanced sensors into use for more effective data

  • Live kamera fra Otter USV med FF Helmer Hanssen i bakgrunnen, på 74 grader nord (Foto: Trude Borch/Akvaplan-niva)

    Gjennombrudd i bruk av autonom teknologi i studie av polarfronten

    Den 15. august 2023 gikk forskningsfartøyet Helmer Hanssen ut fra Tromsø mot polarfronten med et team fra Akvaplan-niva, UiT Norges arktiske universitet, Memorial University og Equinor ombord. Forskningsfartøyet skal ta prøver på ulike stasjoner øst for Svalbard, fra 75 grader nord til 78 grader nord langs 29.5 grader øst.

    Teamet før avreise fra Tromsø (Frida Cnossen, Akvaplan-niva) mangl

  • Thin ice, little overlying snow, and open spaces between floes permit ample sunlight to drive strong under-ice phytoplankton blooms (Photo: Frida Cnossen/Akvaplan-niva).

    Pelagic consequences from mismatch between phytoplankton and grazers during Arctic spring blooms

    Arctic marine ecosystems are characterized by intense pulses of primary production during spring phytoplankton blooms. These blooms provide a large proportion of the total annual energy available to the food web for the entire year. Thus, the coincidence of the bloom with the appearance of grazing zooplankton is important for fuelling the pelagic food-web, a food web that eventually nourishes comm

  • Gelatinous plankton, like the hydromedusa Aglantha and the comb jelly Mertensia are voracious predators on smaller zooplankton. They catch their prey using extendible tentacles with special stinging or sticky cells and haul in the catch.

    Not all zooplankton are copepods...

    By Fredrika Norrbin, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
    Did you know that tiny radiolarians, appendicularians living in temporary housing, and predatory arrow worms and jellyfish thrive in Arctic Seas in the Polar Night?
    Copepod populations decline during winter, because the primary (plant) production is on hold, and predators are active. We may think of fish as the main enemies of zooplank

  • An abundant catch of capelin south of the Polar Front (Photo: Malin Daase)

    Searching for macrozooplankton and fish in the Dark of Night

    By: Maxime Geoffroy, Frida Cnossen, Einat Sandbank, Ingvild Ytterhus Utengen, and Paul Renaud
    Part of the work conducted during the Polar Front campaign aims to understand the structure of pelagic communities across the Barents Sea Polar Front. These pelagic animals are comprised of fish living in the water column and macrozooplankton, drifting animals larger than 1cm. Pelagic animals play a c

  • Foto: Sünnje Basedow (UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet)

    Forskning i polarnatten med "Frankenstein"

    Av Sünnje L. Basedow, UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet (sunnje.basedow@uit.no)
    Vi er på forskningstokt med UiT’s forskingsfartøy "Helmer Hanssen" for å studere overvintrende dyreplankton og deres fordeling langs Polarfronten. Hvilke arter er aktive i mørketiden og hva er deres bidrag i næringskjeden? Er det noen forskjell i dyreplanktonets fordeling i de arktiske og atlantiske vannmassene på Pol

  • The northern fulmar (Photo: Lars Ursem)

    Arctic wildlife at polar front research cruise

    By MSc student Lars Ursem (lars.ursem@wur.nl)
    When writing this it has been over a week since I left Tromsø to go on this research cruise to the polar front. Unfortunately, we do not have a dedicated marine mammal and seabird survey going on onboard as we have encountered a lot of wildlife over the past few days.
    In terms of birds there is, of course, the “normal” stuff with northern fulmar

  • Sorting jellyfish (Photo: Frida Cnossen/Akvaplan-niva)

    Update from the polar front (jelly)fish group

    By Frida Cnossen and Ingvild Ytterhus Utengen, Akvaplan-niva
    Greetings from 78 degrees North! We have just spent 12 days on a research cruise for the PolarFront project onboard RV Helmer Hanssen collecting and identifying a variety of macrozooplankton and pelagic fish. We have also looked at fish stomachs and collected samples for stable isotope analysis to study trophic interactions.

    <

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