One Ocean Expedition 2025-2026 

A 12-month global voyage with the Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl - a floating ambassador for the UN Ocean Decade. Combining sail training, ocean science, education and diplomacy to highlight the ocean’s vital role and inspire action for a sustainable ocean. Visiting ports on three continents.

2025 - 2026

One Ocean Expedition 

Statsraad Lehmkuhl arrived in St. John’s on August 20 and was scheduled to depart the same day for Bermuda. However, with tropical cyclone Eirin passing Newfoundland on August 23, the ship will remain in port until the hurricane risk has passed.

Over the course of a year, the expedition will visit ports across three continents. Several legs are open to the public - no sailing experience needed! Welcome on board!

Sailing route

Docked in the port of St. John's, Canada

Follow our journey

Miyuki Daorana was the only Inuit on board from Nuuk to St. John’s, sharing her people’s way of life. It was a magical experience, but also lonely.

For Miyuki, the word expedition carries a negative ring

Statsraad Lehmkuhl visits St. John's, Canada, August 20 2025.

St. John's, Canada

The ice that prevented Statsraad Lehmkuhl from sailing through the Northwest Passage was not the result of a cold climate, but of global warming.

Stopped by global warming

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Following the success of the One Ocean Expedition 2021–2023, Statsraad Lehmkuhl is once again setting sail on a 12-month circumnavigation to promote ocean sustainability. The voyage will include 27 ports of call across three continents, combining ocean science, education and international cooperation to raise awareness about the crucial role of the ocean for a sustainable future.

On The One Ocean Expedition, Statsraad Lehmkuhl is filled with students, researchers and voyage crew who all work together to sail the big ship and gather experience and knowledge about the ocean.

Life on board

Tromsø, Norway

Bergen, Norway - Lerwick, UK

Reykjavik, Iceland

Nice, France 

Ponta Delgada, the Azores (Portugal)

Nuuk, Greenland

Bermuda

Los Angeles, USA

Bermuda - Panama Canal 

Vancouver, Canada

Seattle, USA

San Fransisco, USA

San Diego, USA

La Paz, Mexico

Herradura, Costa Rica

Cartagena, Columbia

Herradura, Costa Rica - Panama Canal

Norfolk, USA

Cádiz, Spain

Brest, France 

Dublin, Ireland

Bergen, Norway

In July, a new group of students boarded Statsraad Lehmkuhl in 

, the capital of Greenland. They are taking part in the course 

, organized by UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø.

They come from different academic fields, which is part of the course’s purpose: bringing together scientists, philologists, philosophers, social scientists, and lawyers to live and work side by side. During their weeks on board, they study weather, climate and the environment, as well as history, culture, language, and international law.

The students come from 18 different countries, but only one is from Greenland - or Kalaallit Nunaat, as the Inuit call their country.

Miyuki Daorana is 26 years old, born and raised in 

 and in Qaanaaq, the northernmost town in Greenland. Her mother is Japanese, her father belongs to the Inughuit, which is a subgroup of the Inuit people, the Indigenous people of Greenland.

Miyuki is a student, but also a teacher in the course. UiT wanted representatives of Indigenous peoples of the north to take part, and the Inuit Circumpolar Council pointed to her. After hesitating for a while, she accepted.

– I almost said no until I learned that my great grandpa was on a similar trip in the Northwest Passage back then. His journey was very different from mine, much harder, and I wanted to kind of, yeah, be in the same oceans and learn. Kind of rewrite history.

The words “expedition” and “research” do not sound good to Inuit ears.

– An expedition is a journey for researchers and explorers to discover places. Basically, that's what it's known for. But then when you see it from the Inuit perspective - this big ship with the sails and the rig and the ropes, it looks cool, but it can be triggering to many indigenous communities up north, Miyuki explains.

– This is because the explorers came to our lands to do research, indeed, yes, but they researched the people in a way where they measured skulls and noses and skin colour, and then they were categorized like animals, kinda. Quote unquote indicated that we are behind in evolution, and needed to be educated. And they used the research conclusions, so to say, as an excuse to colonize.

And in many ways, expedition is still another word for colonization, according to Miyuki.

– Colonization comes in sneaky words. It is not just an event of the past. It's a process, a mentality and a structure that exists today. It's in the words expedition, modernization, urbanization and industrialization, for example.

This is what Miyuki tries to make the students on board Statsraad Lehmkuhl understand. She calls it “two eyes seeing.”

– it's basically that you use both eyes to see the world. And the metaphor is that one eye is supposed to be the western or the scientific European one, and the other eye is the indigenous approach. And they should be viewed equally and used equally, she explains.

What you carry as knowledge from books is not enough, Miyuki says.

– We Iniut have all of our knowledge about the Arctic from our life experience and the historical knowledge, and our bodily experience in living in the cold Arctic. So both of the perspectives should be used equally in for example, political discussions or decisions, policymaking and stuff.

The close relationship the Inuit have with nature is hard for people in industrialized societies to grasp. It shapes their entire way of life, including language.

– We follow the flow of the weather. Weather is also a word for consciousness, for example, our mental and physical and spiritual well-being connects to what's happening outside. We like silence, to listen, to listen to nature. We are people of few words, but our words are very long, we construct a sentence in one word. So it's super long words, and we need to hear the whole word because at the end it kind of reveals what it really means. That's why we listen more.

Miyuki often uses words from her mother tongue Inuktun to help students understand.

– All of the words weather, climate, spirit and consciousness are all collected in one word through «hila». So that means that our inner self and every person’s, every animal's inner selves are interconnected to the outside world. Whatever we do affects the outside world, and whatever there is in the surroundings affects us. So it's a whole, you can imagine a whole web of interconnected routes and relations.

– «Inua», a very meaningful word. It means life, persona and, you know, life source and energy. It's very fluffy, but all of these English words in one. We say we are Inuit, which means we are people. But a rock or any animal also has a person. They are also people. So we don't have a distinction between animals and humans, living and non-living beings. We don't have a hierarchy there, it's a whole circular system that is connected. People might think it's crazy to say that a rock is a person, but we believe that it's a life. It has a whole life span, it has a purpose. So «inua» also means purpose. Every species of animal, every natural phenomenon has a purpose. In the ecosystem, of course. So everything is connected.

Another word that shows how nature and spirit are interwoven is «anori» or «anerraaq».

– It means storm and wind, but it also means breath and soul. It's just a nice visualization of how the wind is kind of touching everyone and everything, like it connects us all. It's some kind of a breath and every time we breathe, we live, you know? So every time we breathe, the soul is there. So the wind is the soul. And we are a part of that soul through breathing.

– Even every time I talk about these words, it opens my eyes even more.

When you are as dependent on living in harmony with nature as the Inuit are, you develop a different kind of respect for the world around you. Simply put: empathy with nature.

– I think empathy is an important word that should be implemented everywhere, Miyuki says. We have been to climate change conferences where they talk about a lot of how the climate is changing. The solutions to this are quite often technical. But then we forget that the climate crisis is a man-made issue that comes from extracting and disrespecting nature and animals. So I always pull on the word empathy, because if you had empathy for the animals that are mass produced or abused, or if you had empathy for the Earth, you wouldn't have abused it , and you wouldn't have over consumed or polluted it, she says.

– So caring for nature needs to not only come from companies and regulation, but caring for nature also needs to come from the individual people who make these decisions. It has to come from the inside. So climate change needs to be fought from empathy, from love to nature. From genuine care. Empathy is a nice word that collects all the R's; respect and relationship and reciprocity. And with that comes reconciliation and restoration, and responsibility as well. Well - so empathy is a big thing.

Miyuki does not hide that life on board has sometimes been exhausting. And lonely.

– I feel lonely because I'm the only Inuk here. That makes me the Inuit knowledge holder here on board. There's a lot of responsibility on me. I wish there was another person from Inuit, teach with me or at least talk to me in my own language and then we could spare each other.

She calls this minority fatigue, something organisers of future courses should keep in mind. Still, she does not regret joining the expedition, especially because of the encounters with people from very different cultures.

– We get to know each other in a completely different setting, sailing and doing the rigging and pulling ropes and all the coiling. It's all been magical.

Maybe life on board, in some ways, reflects what she values most in Inuit culture?

– It's very warm, very welcoming. I imagine it like a warm house in the cold winter that is bright and warm and light, with food on the table and everyone laughing and singing songs and music. And I'm very proud of the collectivity, because we're always here, there for each other. I feel even if we don't talk, we're still there for each other. Like through hugs and body language and just quality time in nature. And it's just, it's very down to earth.

St. John’s is the provincial capital and the largest city on Newfoundland, located at the easternmost edge of Canada. Fishing was long the main industry, but has now been overtaken by oil and gas, along with trade and tourism.

The first people came to North America from Siberia when dry land covered the Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago, and humans have lived on Newfoundland for a very long time. The oldest traces of the Inuit, who hunted and fished on the ice and along the coasts here, date back 9,000 years.

The first Europeans to reach Newfoundland, and in fact the North American continent, were Norwegian Vikings. They sailed from Greenland in the 11th century and settled in what they called Vinland - “Meadowland” in English. 

The Vikings stayed only for a short time, and nearly 500 years passed before Europeans returned.

In 1497, Giovanni Caboto from Venice set out on an expedition for Henry VII of England, like Columbus also in search of a sea route to India. St. John’s is said to have been named because Caboto sailed into the bay where the city now lies on June 24 - the feast day of Saint John the Baptist.

From the 1500s onwards, fishermen from Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, and England came to Newfoundland. They stayed along the coast for extended periods, but it wasn’t until around 1630 that people settled permanently in St. John’s. 

By the 1700s, St. John’s had grown into a town, and today it has close to 240,000 inhabitants.

In 1583, Newfoundland became England’s first overseas colony. France also established colonies in what is now Canada, but after several conflicts, Great Britain took over all French colonies in this region in 1759.

When the United States became independent in 1776, the remaining British colonies in North America were united as British North America, and later as Canada in 1867, except for Newfoundland and Bermuda. 

Newfoundland did not join Canada until 1949, after two close call referendums had been held.

Although St. John’s lies further south than Paris, it sits on a peninsula far out in the Atlantic Ocean, giving it a cooler climate than its latitude would suggest.

July is the warmest month, with average temperatures between 11.2°C and 20.9°C. January is the coldest, averaging between -0.7°C and -7.8°C. The city gets a lot of precipitation, 1,539 mm per year, mostly in the winter months. 

Much of it falls as snow, and it’s not unusual for the ground to be covered by a full meter of snow in winter.

Normal maximum temperature in August: 20.8°C
Normal rainfall in August: 100 mm

Statsraad Lehmkuhl had to turn back just days before reaching Port Inlet, the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage. The ship is polar-certified to sail in Open Waters, meaning less than ten percent of the sea covered by ice. Forecasts indicated more ice than that in the western part of the passage, and Transport Canada withdrew the sailing permit.

Many who commented on this on social media take it as a sign that the ice in the Arctic Ocean is not disappearing as climate scientists warn. But they are wrong - sea ice extent is at a record low this year, and it is in fact the warming of the north that halted Statsraad Lehmkuhl's voyage.

There are two types of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

There is sea ice, formed when seawater freezes. And there are icebergs, from massive cliffs of ice to small chunks, formed where the glaciers in Greenland meet the sea and breaks apart. Sea ice forms on the ocean - glacier ice forms on land.

It was glacier ice that stopped Statsraad Lehmkuhl, the kind of conditions ice pilot Stèphan Guy calls “bergy waters.”

– The ship could not continue because there were too much bergy waters. What happens with global warming is that glaciers get weaker and weaker, and pieces of ice are falling into the water. And then these pieces of ice we call icebergs, or bergy bits, are drifting within the ocean. So it's not related to the cold climate, that we have more bergy waters, but it is related to global warming, Guy explains.

Researcher in climate dynamics, Rebekka Jastamin Steene at the Arctic University of Norway, agrees.

– The sea ice is melting because of climate change. There is less of it. But at the same time, the warming causes the glaciers to calve more, resulting in more icebergs floating around in the ocean.

Stèphan Guy began his career as a captain in the Canadian Coast Guard and has over 40 years of experience aboard icebreakers and other vessels in Arctic waters. He was involved in planning Statsraad Lehmkuhl’s voyage and was on board en route to the Northwest Passage. That the ice should stop the ship from sailing came as a surprise.

– A voyage through the passage seemed realistic based on the amount of ice we’ve seen over the last ten years. We were unfortunate, but in the end, nature decides here, not us.

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic varies with the season, largest in mid-March, smallest in mid-September.

Both winter and summer extents are declining dramatically. Since satellites began monitoring the ice in 1979, the extent has decreased by 13 percent per decade, according to the 

The winter of 2025 saw the lowest extent in the last 35 years, and this summer’s extent so far matches the record low of 2012.

At the same time, the ice is getting thinner. From being two to three meters thick - and up to five meters at its thickest, more and more of it is now only one to two meters thick.

Warmer air and warmer ocean water are the main reasons for melting Arctic ice, but the loss of ice at sea further accelerates warming.

Less white ice means less sunlight is reflected in summer. More heat is absorbed by the dark ocean, causing even more melting. In winter, the effect is reversed - the ice acts like a blanket, preventing heat from the ocean from warming the cold air above. 

Steene calls this mechanism “Arctic amplification.”

– It is the reason the Arctic warms even more than the rest of the planet. In fact, it is warming between two and five times faster than the global average.

The thickness of the inland ice covering most of Greenland also varies throughout the year. Glaciers gain mass from November through March and shrink in the summer months. 

Ice on land is also disappearing at a rapid pace.

For 28 consecutive years, more ice has melted in summer than has been added in winter, according to 

the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

The losses are not small - an average of 150 million liters of water per minute, day and night, all year round. That equals the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool every single second.

The meltwater ends up in the ocean, and in 2024 it contributed to a sea level rise of 0.2 mm.

Stèphan Guy was young when he fell in love with the Arctic.

– Sailing here at the age of 19, discovering these very isolated areas, the Inuit community, the landscape, the remoteness, and the history - was an eye-opener. I was fascinated by the stories of the early sailors who came to these waters. I thought they were men of steel, and I liked the idea of following in their footsteps, he says.

– It made me feel good about being here. To this day, I’ve never lost the pleasure of coming back, feeling like a discoverer. I know I’m not, but I pretend I am, and I still enjoy sailing these waters and having that sense of being an explorer.

More than 40 years at sea in the Arctic means that Guy has seen the climate changes first-hand, and he is clear:

– What is happening is dramatic. We see a lot of change in the overall Arctic temperatures. 

More open water in the Arctic leads to more ships sailing through the Northwest Passage, and that worries Guy.

– I’m a guy who’s been in the marine business all my life. I’m not against marine traffic, but the number of ships sailing these waters is increasing year after year. I believe there’s still a lot of work to be done to make these waters safer and to build better infrastructure to support the traffic - not only for search and rescue, but also to provide proper logistics for any ship. There are almost no docking facilities in the Arctic, no refueling stations, and no towns prepared to receive large numbers of tourists like we see with cruise ships, he says.

– Nature also suffers the burden of such traffic, look at the history of all major waterways around the world. The pressure we put on the marine environment speaks for itself, and we are about to repeat the same mistakes in the Arctic. That worries me greatly, and I hope our leaders will find a solution to prevent too much stress on this very special environment.