UCT Oceanographers to participate in 2019 Antarctica Weddell Sea Expedition
Prof. Isabelle Ansorge and Dr. Sarah Fawcett (UCT Oceanography) and Dr. Tommy Bornman (SAEON/NMU), will join a team of research scientists from the Nekton Foundation in the UK and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The team will comprise glaciologists, marine geologists, marine biologists, marine biogeochemists, oceanographers and marine archaeologists in search of the wreck of Endurance.
The Weddell Sea Expedition is heading to the Weddell Sea region of Antarctica in January and February 2019.The objective of the expedition is to survey the underside of the Larsen C Ice Shelf, document the rich and little-studied marine life of the western Weddell Sea ecosystem, and attempt to locate the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which was trapped and crushed by the ice and sunk there in 1915. The 45-day voyage will be conducted from the South African polar research and logistics vessel, the R/V S.A. Agulhas II, and will be led by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge in the UK
