Collaboration with Arctic Shipping

This report describes the experiences working onboard the Norwegian Coast Guard ship KV Svalbard and the expedition ship Le Commandant Charcot during the INTAROS and CAATEX projects. The Norwegian Coast Guard has supported Norwegian research institutes over many decades and made tremendous contribution to Norwegian polar and ocean research. The report describes complex operations carried out in 2019 and in 2020 with KV Svalbard, and two research schools carried out in 2020 and 2021.
The PONANT cruise operator has many cruise ships operating around the world and in 2021 they had their first expedition to the North Pole bringing several invited guests to participate in the dry test with Le Commandant Charcot. Among the guests was a science team consisting of two scientists from INTAROS/NERSC, two from IFREMER, a scientist from NTNU in Trondheim and two scientists from University in Tromsø. As part of INTAROS, NERSC deployed different buoys, took oceanographic sections with XBTs nd collected acoustic measurements. Other institutions carried out other research work from the ship: IFREMER deploy two Argo floats at the North Pole and new balloons for atmospheric measurement, NTNU was testing accuracy of new positioning satellites, UiT participated in the Search and Rescue project. In this report we describe the INTAROS team experiences onboard Le Commandant Charcot.