RV Investigator finishes 55‑day Antarctic cruise
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- RV Investigator spent 55 days at sea on the COOKIES voyage, traveling over 6,500 nautical miles and delivering the equivalent of a full year of Antarctic research (more than 10% of its operational time).
- Dr. Linda Armbrecht led the multinational research team from IMAS and oversaw the collection of over 10,000 sediment cores, including a record 20.5‑meter piston‑core sample from the seafloor.
- CSIRO technicians used multibeam echosounders to produce high‑resolution bathymetry, mapping previously unmapped sections of the global seabed (less than 30% mapped to modern standards).
- The expedition gathered more than 130 underway water samples and deployed CTD and trace‑metal rosette instruments to profile temperature, nutrients, and trace metals such as iron, zinc, manganese, and copper.
- Deep‑towed camera and benthic sleds documented about 400 organisms and captured over 10,000 still images and hours of video of the Antarctic continental shelf’s benthic ecosystems.
- Andrew Martini (Program Director, CSIRO Marine National Facility) highlighted that the voyage provides vital climate‑laboratory data that will help the global scientific community understand Antarctic impacts on oceans and climate.
Why it matters: The unprecedented sediment and water data from the COOKIES voyage give climate scientists and marine ecologists a detailed, multi‑century archive of Antarctic ocean‑ice dynamics, enabling more accurate models of carbon uptake and ecosystem response, which in turn informs global climate policy and resource management.
