SEACHANGE North-West European Research Cruise videos by Jane Earland

Introduction

SEACHANGE is a six-year research project funded by the ERC Synergy Grant Scheme (part of the EU’s research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020). It is jointly run by the University of Exeter (UK), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany) and the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

The principal aim of SEACHANGE is to answer the question: What were the oceans like before large-scale human impact? We therefore need to test the scale and rate of biodiversity loss resulting from fishing, whaling and habitat destruction over the last 2,000 years in the North Sea and around Iceland, eastern Australia and the Antarctic Peninsula. In addition, we need to find out more about the earlier transition from hunter-gatherer to farming communities in northern Europe around 6,000 years ago.

Five key cultural transitions frame the work packages (WP): the European transition to farming (Mesolithic to Neolithic, 8000 to 5000 years BP; WP1), the European pre-industrial to modern (last 2000 years; WP2), the Australian hunter-gatherer (aboriginal) to colonial (last 6,000 years; WP3), the Viking age settlement of Iceland (WP4) and the advent of intensive whaling/fishing in Antarctica (WP5). WPs 4 and 5 capture transitions from “fully pristine” to impacted, in Iceland from before the first human settlement in AD 874 to the present day, and in Antarctica the transition from pristine into the phase of intensive whaling starting in the twentieth century.

However, before answering the question of: What were the oceans like before large-scale human impact? we first need the raw materials. Because we’re monitoring the oceans, we therefore need to go to sea to gather our samples, and this is where the DY150 cruise on the RSS Discovery begins.

Where and how?

The SEACHANGE Cruise DY150 main targets were to recover piston/gravity cores, mega cores and dredged bivalve shell from sites in the North Sea, Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland) and the north Icelandic shelf. The collection of key sediment and shell sample material from the North Sea and north Icelandic shelf allows SEACHANGE to start to address work packages 1, 2 and 4.

The RRS Discovery is one of the most advanced research ships in the world. It is 100m long and is operated by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) based in Southampton, UK. Since its first expedition in 2013, the Discovery has successfully traversed the world’s oceans from Antarctica to the Arctic and everything in between, to learn more about our oceans, both past, present and future.

The SEACHANGE Cruise DY150 visited dozens of different sites in five different locations (Skagerrak, the Fladen Ground, Shetlands, Orkney, and Iceland). Following a week in the dock in Southampton, the ship set off early Saturday morning (16 May 2022) on calm seas heading east through the English Channel to the Skagerrak. After spending a few days here, the ship headed north to the Fladen Ground, a basin in the upper part of the North Sea full of oilrigs and not much else. The lack of material from the Fladen Ground is due to human activity over the past millennia. The continuous fishing, industrial activity and dredging have left the North Sea mostly empty. It is an industrial landscape, just as affected by human activity as the Canadian Oil Sands or the coal mines in northern England. Because it is hidden under the waves, the tendency is to think about it less, and thus, less care is spent on trying to project marine ecosystems, hence the importance of projects like SEACHANGE. After leaving the Fladen Ground, the ship travelled further north to the Shetlands and Orkney, and then a three-day transit to the North Icelandic Shelf, where the next week was spent working in different locations both within and just outside the Arctic Circle before disembarking in Reykjavik on the 11th May 2022.

Follow this link to find out more in the DY150 full cruise report

Collecting the material is just the beginning of the scientific process. The next step will be the rigorous processing of data, analysis, writing up and peer review, which can take years. The samples collected during DY150 will be sent to various institutions to be worked on by academics for years to come. Given the nature of the SEACHANGE project and Horizon 2020’s importance to the EU, the conclusions from this research could very well influence marine conservation efforts at a global level.