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Polar Bears of Svalbard

By Courtney Mattison for Mission Blue

For those who have observed polar bears in the wild, the experiences they recall often sound reverential and daring. The world’s largest land predator, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are larger and more carnivorous than grizzlies and hunt both on land and in the sea. But on Mission Blue’s latest Hope Spot Expedition to the Norwegian Arctic, the bears we observed were more threatened than threatening.
“So we just came upon a mother and cub and they are very very skinny,” said Mette Eliseussen, Manager and Expedition Leader for Arctic Voyagers at Basecamp Spitsbergen, as she led the Mission Blue Expedition Team aboard an inflatable boat within a safe distance of two polar bears. Kip Evans, Mission Blue Director of Expeditions and Photography and leader of the expedition, focused his camera lens at the bears and began shooting images.…

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Spitsbergen Beneath the Surface

By Courtney Mattison for Mission Blue

Imagine rolling backwards off an inflatable boat into icy Arctic waters… on purpose. Enveloped in protective gear, you stay mostly dry as the cold sinks into your body and you descend into the frigid depths below.
“The first thing that hits you is just the shock of the cold,” says Dr. Helena Reinardy, Associate Professor of Ecotoxicology at The University Centre Svalbard (UNIS) and member of the Longyearbyen Dive Club. She continues, “You think, I’ve got to get out right now!… But then you very quickly get used to it.”
Beneath the waves, you find yourself immersed in planktonic life, including some surprisingly large zooplankton—pulsing golden green jellies the size of marbles, skittering shrimplike amphipods and graceful sea angels (Clione limacina).…

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Mission Blue Launches First Arctic Expedition to the Svalbard Archipelago Hope Spot!

Rachel Krasna

Imagine journeying all the way to the Arctic only to find nothing, just sheer barren cold desert leading into the open blue. That scenario is not so far fetched lately, as scientists start to struggle with the reality of the melting Arctic landscape. With increasingly warmer waters and temperature rising, the Arctic could face ice-free periods each summer by 2050. This poses grave concern for countless species and biota that call this ecosystem home, particularly in one of the Mission Blue Hope Spots – the Svalbard Archipelago. Why should we care? Arctic sea ice is critical for wildlife, and also helps regulate the planet’s temperature. Recent studies also say that Arctic sea ice — and the lack of it — can impact natural weather patterns in distant areas like the United States (USA Today, 4/3/18).…

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The Sound of Climate Disruption

By: Michael Stocker 

It has been known for quite some time that excessive anthropogenic carbon dioxide is modifying ocean chemistry, increasing acidity, and compromising shell growth in calciferous sea life. The effects of this have been confirmed in sea snails, corals, and oysters, but also in marine phytoplankton – the organisms that provide a significant share of the oxygen we breathe.
In these alarming times I don’t want to increase our collective stress levels any more, except to say that turning our backs on this additional cost of a fossil-fueled civilization is not a wise survival strategy. But there is an acoustical component of a warming planet that I’d like to explore.
In 2008 researchers determined that changes in ocean chemistry also had an effect on sound propagation – with the concern that noise would not be so readily absorbed by a more acidic ocean.…

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Journey Across The Arctic

Mission Blue is proud to partner with 5 Gyres! 
By: Carolynn Box and Lia Colabello, The 5 Gyres Institute

 5 Gyres was founded on the belief that citizen science can change the world. In 2009, we began raising awareness about marine plastic pollution when Dr. Marcus Ericksen and Anna Cummins collected 15,000 plastic water bottles to create the JUNK RAFT, which Marcus sailed for 2,600 miles for 88 day from California to Hawaii. Since then, the organization has embarked on 17 research expeditions, covering 50,000 miles and engaging scientists around the globe. 

 
In 2014, 5 Gyres convened eight international scientists to publish the first global estimate of plastic pollution in our oceans: 5.25 trillion particles weighing in at 269,000 tons of “plastic smog” worldwide. 
 

For our 17th research expedition this past August, The 5 Gyres Institute traveled 1687 miles through the Canadian Arctic to collect microplastics to better understand the global distribution of the smog of plastic that plagues our seas.…

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You are invited to a benchmark expedition with Sylvia Earle that redefines art, exploration and the conservation of our planet!

From our friends at the Ocean Geographic Society:
Join an elite team of explorers comprised of Dr. Sylvia Earle, David Doubilet, Jennifer Hayes, Ernie Brooks, Wyland, Michael AW, Göran Ehlmé, Amos Nachoum, Johan Ernst Nilson, Emory Kristof, Stuart Ireland and Leandro Blanco in an expedition to the High Arctic to produce a book, exhibition and a video documentary.  
The mission of Elysium – Artists for the Arctic is to capture the panorama, flora and fauna of the northern polar region in a perspective no one has seen before.  The Arctic region is regarded as one of the most enchanting wilderness regions of our planet, yet volatile and under severe threat from the warming of the world’s climate. This expedition promises the most awe-inspiring and stunning visual interpretation ever seen of the Arctic.…

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Photo of the Day ~ Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man On Ice

Da Vinci’s 500-year-old Vitruvian Man was reinvented on the Arctic Sea Ice in 2011 with the help of Mission Blue Partner Greenpeace and Los Angeles artist John Quigley in an effort to “draw attention to how climate change is causing the rapid melting of sea ice beyond most predictions.”
Constructed with copper banding, which was later removed and recycled, a team of Greenpeace activists laid out “Melting Vitruvian Man” on an ice sheet which was the size of four olympic-size swimming pools, following artist Quigley’s specifications.

Using Greenpeace’s ice-breaker, the Arctic Sunrise, they travelled to a remote area 500 miles from the North Pole, after scouting for the perfect ice canvas from the air. The installation was created in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Norway’s Svalbard Islands.…

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Photo of the Day ~ Curious Hudson’s Bay Belugas

For many of us, the Arctic is just a far-away corner of the planet that we may never see. So why should we care about it?  “It isn’t just about polar bears,” says Dr. Sylvia Earle. “Although they are the Arctic’s biggest predator and cutest mascot, there is much more at stake in this rich and largely unexplored ecosystem than you’d think.” Our lives depend the stability of the Arctic – one reason that Dr. Earle has declared the Arctic region as a Mission Blue ‘Hope Spot.’
The images created by Virginia Bria celebrate the beauty of our fragile blue planet. The complete collection of her work is on her website,  Bella Sirena Images.
Here, Virginia encounters a group of beluga whales who are clearly curious and unconcerned by her presence.…

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Shell Agrees Not to Drill For Oil in the Arctic in 2012

By Andrew Hartsig
This week, Shell admitted what we’ve known all along: the company is just not ready to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean.
This past weekend, a failed test of Shell’s oil spill containment system resulted in damage to the dome designed to contain oil in the event of a spill. In light of the damage to the containment dome, Shell announced that it was abandoning its plans to drill into oil-bearing layers in the Arctic Ocean this summer. The company said its drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean this summer would be limited to “top holes”—initial sections of wells that do not penetrate into known oil-bearing layers.
According to one media report, trouble with the containment dome started when one of the dome’s winches failed to operate correctly.…

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