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 27 ports on three continents, including a historic transit of the Northwest Passage.

2025 - 2026

One Ocean Expedition 

Statsraad Lehmkuhl departed Ponta Delgada, the Azores on July 8 and is now at sea en route to Nuuk, Grenland, arriving July 29. 

Aboard on this leg are ocean scientist and students from the University of Bergen  – and everyday people sharing the journey. 

Several legs are open to the public - no sailing experience needed! Welcome on board!

At sea en route to Nuuk, Greenland

Follow our journey

On the way from the Azores to Greenland, Statsraad Lehmkuhl crosses the Gulf Stream. The current starts in the Gulf of Mexico and brings heath to northern Europe.

Sailing into Europe’s central heating system

The voyage to Greenland began on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, which actually is a  mountain peak of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Sailing along the longest mountain range on earth

Statsraad Lehmkuhl is heading north toward Greenland. On board is a group of students led by Kerim Nisancioglu, who in many ways feels he is “on his way home.”

40 students on their way to the Arctic

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Following the success of the One Ocean Expedition 2021–2023, Statsraad Lehmkuhl is once again on an international voyage to promote ocean sustainability. Over the course of 12 months, the expedition will visit 27 ports across three continents, including a historic transit of the Northwest Passage. 

Sailing route

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

Pond Inlet, Greenland  

Gjoa Haven, Canada

Cambridge Bay, Canada 

Whittier, Alaska USA 

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

The Gulf Stream carries more water than all the world’s rivers combined, flowing northeast towards Europe. Without this stream Scandinavia would have the same cold climate as Greenland, Alaska, and northern Canada. 

The last few yeas there are indications that the Gulf Stream is weakining. Could it come to a halt? No…, and perhaps.

What drives the water out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the Atlantic is wind. 

, which blow from east to west near the equator, and the westerlies, which blow from west to east between 30 and 60 degrees north, sustain a large gyre in the North Atlantic.

The water flows north along the western side and south along the eastern side of the ocean. Because the planet rotates, currents along the western edge of an ocean basin become stronger than those on the eastern edge. The Gulf Stream is therefore a powerful current: 100 km wide, 800–1,200 meters deep, and moving at about 2.5 m/s at the surface.

As long as the sun shines and the Earth keeps rotating, this vast gyre will keep spinning in the Atlantic. No risk of it stopping, that is.

But it is not this gyre that carries warm water to Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Off Newfoundland, a system scientists call the "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation", abbreviated AMOC, takes over.

The engine behind AMOC is differences in temperature and salinity. Cold, salty water is heavier than warmer, less salty water. The cold in the north cools the ocean surface and increases its salinity, causing the water to sink. This engine works like a pump - the sinking water is the piston that pulls warm water northward along the surface and pushes cold water southward at depth.

Wind and tides create currents at the surface, but all the deep ocean currents are formed this way, driven by differences in salinity and temperature.

In addition to influencing the climate, this mechanism does two other important jobs:

The sinking water carries CO2 from the atmosphere. Over the last 100 years, the ocean has absorbed a quarter of all the CO2 humans have emitted. Surface water absorbs CO2 everywhere, but there are only two places where this CO2-rich water sinks to the depths: around Antarctica and in the North Atlantic. 

When deep water eventually rises again, it brings with it a wealth of nutrients that, without these currents, would remain locked in the seafloor.

Now that the planet is warming, scientists have begun to wonder whether the “pump” in the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic might stop. The northern regions are warming the fastest, so the water is no longer cooled as much as before, while ice from Greenland and floating in the Arctic Ocean is melting, making the water less salty.

Marius Årthun is a researcher at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen and at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. He studies AMOC. 

 shows that the formation of deep water, the “pump” in AMOC, is moving northwards into the Arctic Ocean as the sea ice disappears.

– Theories about such a shift have existed, says Marius Årthun in an article published by the Bjerknes Centre. But it was expected to happen only in a much warmer future. That it has already been underway for several decades, we did not know.

Årthun does not believe there will be a sudden stop to the current in the next decades, as some have feared, but he warns against becoming complacent.

– Atlantic water is pushing into the Arctic, but it cannot do so forever. How long can the Arctic keep the wheel turning? Will we reach a point where even that gear is worn out?

Take a look at the map below. South America, North America, Europe, and Africa fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The reason is obvious – they actually were connected once.

What today are separate continents were once part of a vast, continuous landmass that has been named Pangea. We know this not only because the shapes match, but also because rocks and landforms align, as do the fossil remains of the animal life that existed at that time.

Two hundred million years ago, Pangea began to break apart after having existed for 160 million years. It was the same forces within Earth’s glowing interior that had once joined the landmasses which eventually tore the C-shaped continent apart again.

The breakup began in the north, and what are today South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica separated 150–140 million years ago. The Norwegian Sea, between Greenland and Norway, was the last to open up, about 60–55 million years ago.

Twenty-five million years ago, what is now India collided with Asia. The “bulge” that resulted became the Himalayas. The Alps were also formed around this time, in much the same way.

The continents, which are in fact enormous plates of rock floating on the Earth's glowing interior, never stop moving. A rift is currently opening in East Africa, which will one day split this continent in two. The puzzle pieces on either side of the Atlantic Ocean are still drifting apart, at a rate of 2.5 centimeters per year.

Along this rift, the opening is constantly being refilled with glowing magma rising from the Earth’s interior. The magma poures out as lava, solidifies, and gradually builds what is the longest mountain range on the planet: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The mountain ridge stretches from Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic to the northeast of Greenland in the north.

Most of the mountain range lies underwater, but in some places the lava has piled up so high that islands have formed. Statsraad Lehmkuhl has visited two of them during this expedition: Iceland and the Azores. 

Jan Mayen in the north, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks near Brazil, and the islands of Ascension, Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and Bouvet Island in the south are also mountain peaks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

All these islands have volcanic origins, and several of the volcanoes remain active. The eruptions in Iceland in recent years are well known, and the Azores also host both active volcanoes and hot springs.

One might think that no life could exist where the lava pours out from the seabed, but that is not the case. In 2003, researchers from the University of Bergen sent the submersible Ægir 2,300 meters down, between Jan Mayen and Svalbard.

The images revealed “chimneys,” where 320 °C hot and mineral-rich water gushed out. The researchers also discovered organisms that actually lived off the energy in the hot water, using the minerals in a process called chemosynthesis - in contrast to photosynthesis, which uses energy from sunlight.

It was likely the puzzle-like shapes of the continents on each side of the Atlantic that inspired the geographer Abraham Ortelius in 1596 to suggest that the continents might be moving. The hypothesis that all continents had once been joined was presented by Alfred Wegener in 1912. It was also Wegener who gave the supercontinent the name Pangea, from the Greek words “pan” and “gaia,” meaning “all land.”

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge was discovered in 1853 when the USS Dolphin conducted depth soundings. But it was not until 1950 that scientists learned that a seismically active valley with mountains on either side had formed, leading to the confirmation of Wegener’s theory of continental drift.

Professor Kerim Nisancioglu from the University of Bergen is leading a group of nearly 40 students on the voyage from the Azores to Greenland. The students come from many different countries, mostly Portugal, but also Norway, Greenland, and the United States.

– The students have very diverse backgrounds. Some work with data, some study the Greenland ice sheet, some focus on offshore wind, and many work on ecosystems and marine life, Kerim explains. Along the way, we will collect samples and spend as much time together as possible to learn from one another and eventually share the data and the insights we gain.

Kerim is a professor of climate dynamics, with a background in oceanography and glaciology, and he has worked in the Arctic, especially Greenland, for many years.

– I study how the ice is affected by climate change, how quickly it melts, and how much this contributes to sea-level rise, he says. Every year, Kerim spends one to two months in Greenland conducting research in the fjords and along the coast, working closely with local communities.

– We already know a lot about what is happening there, how climate change impacts the ice, the ecosystem, and the wildlife. But it is also important to connect these changes to what is happening offshore, beyond Greenland’s coastline, so we hope to observe and measure, and in that way contribute to the research being done in the Arctic.

The expedition has several goals, both scientific and personal.

– What I think we will gain from the trip is strong friendships between researchers from different countries. These students are the new generation of climate scientists and oceanographers from many cultures and places around the world, and the fact that they can work together across disciplines and national borders is a very important part of what we will get out of this course.

Gathering so many students together on a ship for several weeks is not without its challenges. It is demanding to be on a vessel that is constantly moving; there is always someone who gets seasick, and there is not much privacy. But Kerim is not worried.

– The students are very good at taking care of one another, he says. They gain an experience of a lifetime, and at the same time it is intense. We do a lot of work, conduct research, learn new techniques, and learn from each other. Even though the students also have some tough moments, we give them time to relax and talk about other things.

Kerim is glad that the trip to Greenland takes three weeks. It gives everyone on board time to find a rhythm and feel comfortable.

– Experience shows that it takes at least four or five days. And after that, most people are doing quite well.

One of the goals of this leg of the One Ocean Expedition is to connect historical and modern science.

– We are going to repeat some of the observations that were made 150 years ago, back when people knew very little about the deep ocean. Back then, sailors collected measurements from ships like this, lowering hemp ropes down to 5,000 meters to record ocean temperatures.

Measurements from that time show that today, the deep ocean is about 0.4 degrees warmer than it was 150 years ago.

– But those measurements were made with a method that needs to be calibrated, and that is something we are trying to address now, using modern instruments, but old hemp ropes, and working from a sailing ship.

During the One Ocean Expedition, there are research coordinators on board at all times. They serve as the link between the ship and the scientists, and they are responsible when measurements are taken.

– And they contribute to teaching, which is fantastic when we arrive with students, says Kerim. They also give us access to the measurements the onboard systems constantly collect, which we can build on and contribute to, something that is very valuable.

Kerim is looking forward to getting to know the students better. 

– Some I already know from online, we have had lectures for two months. But it is something completely different to be together now, he says. The social aspect, getting to know each other, understanding where people come from, learning about their cultures, learning about their work, sharing the knowledge we have. Sitting here on the ship, sometimes in the sun, but maybe also up in the mast in wind and rain, it works, and we get to know one another.

For Kerim, Greenland is a “second home,” but traveling there on a sailing ship is something special.

– It is one of the absolutely most amazing parts of being involved in this, to sail into Greenland. Very few people ever experience approaching the coast and seeing the fjords, the mountains, the ice, the icebergs, and the wildlife. I have been there many times, but to arrive with a sailing vessel along the coast this way, it will be absolutely, absolutely indescribable.