By paola catapano | Polarquest2018 project leader
2 MONTHS COUNTDOWN TO EXPEDITION START !
It seems unbeliavable, but today, May 21st we are starting our 2 month countdown to Nanuq's departure from Iceland. Thanks to your donations, we are fully in the IMPLEMENTATION STAGE and our project is now a reality! A lot of work has gone in the past months and we're pleased to share a short report of the main highlights with you.
MARCH 2018: MANTANET FOR MICROPLASTIC TRAINING @ISMAR CNR LERICI
On March 2018, Polarquest2018 project leader Paola Catapano and Mantanet junior scientist Safiria Buono attended a training session with world reknown microplatics expert and marine scientist Stefano Aliani at ISMAR (the Marine research Institute) of CNR (National Research Council) in Lerici (La Spezia, Italy). They learned how to sample microplastics with two different methods, the “Mantanet sampling”, ideal when the sea is smooth and there is not too much ice on the water surface, the second, “bottle sampling”, implemented when the mantanet can’t be used due to weather and ice conditions. Prof. Aliani explained in detail the protocol for sampling microplastics from the sea as well as how to preserve samples for later analysis avoiding contamination. He also designed a map of sampling stations both in Iceland and Svalbard, indicating the yet unsampled sixth "microplastic island" in the Arctic, a gateway for microplastics situated near the Beaufort Gyre, the wind-driven ocean current in the Arctic Ocean region. Polarquest2018 will be the first expedition to sample it! Samples will be sent to the CNR-ISMAR laboratory in Lerici (Italy) to be analysed by our expert Stefano Aliani and his team. Our training is documented with photos on the Polarquest2018 website. They also took the opportunity to record a video interview with prof. Aliani, where he gives the current status of the microplastics problem in the world oceans and provides indication for solutions. The interview is on the Polarquest2018 website.
APRIL 2018
A small team from Polarquest2018 visited the Svalbard archipelago on a 10 day survey trip to prepare for the summer expedition. Most of their trip, they were off the grid – without access to the internet or modern communications. But they did manage to post photos and short clips as soon as they were back in civilisation! On the last day just before departure (Friday 13 April), the went live on Facebook from the North Pole Exploration Museum in Longyearbyen (Svalbard's only city) to share the knowledge acquired there on Arctic research thanks to their meetings with scientists working there at the moment, such as Frederic Vivier, oceanographer of CNRS Paris, who also took part in the fb live, and to their meeting with the local research in Svalbard authorities.
MAY - PATCH COMPETITION
We launched a mission patch competition for school students to get acquainted with Polarquest2018 's scientific missions: microplastics, cosmic rays and drone spectrogametry and cartography. Early May we proclaimed 3 winners, who won trips to Geneva, to take part in the cosmic detector assembly at CERN, to Lerici to get to know more about the the ISMAR CNR marine lab microplastic research and to the Science Museum in Milan, to attend a conference celerating Arctic research today and at the time of pioneers, on the occasion of the ITALIA Airship expedition 90th anniversary.
MAY - COMEMMORATION EVENTS
Polarquest2018 has partnered with three prestigious Italian institutions to commemorate the 90th anniversary of this pioneering flight over the North Pole with three events open to the press and the public, on each of the anniversary days of Nobile’s expedition:
WE TEST cancelleation and new Citizen Science project
The fundraising campaign for the Citizen Science project WeTest that we launche to support the University of Alberta for the development of a smartphone APP toassess the quality of the water was not succesful withdrawn it from the Global Giving website. We agree that this project is in a too eraly stage to be fully tested on board Nanuq. Since we fully believe in the value of Citzen Science, we became member of the @solarimpulse World Alliance for Efficient Solutions with a citizenscience mantanet for microplastics and hope to be chosen among the#1000solutions by Bertrand Piccard's movement too http://bit.ly/WorldAlliance. Announcements due on UN World Environment Day June 5. We believe we stand good chances of being selected because this year's edition theme is “Beat Plastic Pollution”, an apeal to the world to coming together to combat single-use plastic pollution. Fully in tune with our mission!
MEDIA & COMMS
This period has also been fully busy dealing with media partnerships and communications. We have 2 producers for our documentary, social media are more and more actve and media coverage is starting to heap up. We recommend you to follow us un twitter, facebook and Instagram and regularly check our news and media coverage sections on the website!
Thanks for your support and keep supporting us as the mission time approaches! We are not far from the 60K USD mark and we're hopeful to reach this goal before oir expedition starts next July!
Yours Polarques2018 project leader
Paola Catapano
On behalf of the whole team!
Links:
By Paola Catapano | Project Leader
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