This is it! We have disembarked in Tromsø and are heading home after a very successful and enjoyable expedition on RV #Polarstern! Many thanks to the crew, chief scientist and colleagues for making this possible! #PS143/1 #Arctic @awi

Land ho!
So nice to see and smell land again as #Polarstern steams towards Tromsø! #PS143/1 @awi

Yesterday afternoon, we started our way south to Tromsø, where most scientists and crew will disembark from #Polarstern. #PS143/1 was a very successful & fun expedition, but now I am looking forward to green spaces, family & friends and !
for a calm passage! #Arctic @awi

The last action of #PS143/1 was successful: our crawler was safely deployed on the seafloor and the ROV visit shows that it is crawling and that its benthic chambers were lowered into the sediment and began the first cycle of oxygen measurements, one of many to come during the year-long deployment. Every 10 days, the crawler will make a new measurement and will then move for 10 m .

Sad find but positive outcome?! During the last dive at the HAUSGARTEN central station (~2500 m), the ROV found a bundle of many different #plastics related to fisheries & brought it up. I found at least nine different species entangled in this discarded bundle! #PS143/1 #Arctic
@awi @geomar_en

Another night, another camera deployment on the seafloor of our southernmost #HAUSGARTEN station (~2300 m), which is most influenced by Atlantic waters. All our #TimeSeries stations are now completed for this year ! #PS143/1 #Arctic @awi

Enjoying a spot of sunshine after days of fog, as we proceed to our next station !
#PS143/1 #Arctic @awi

Quite spectacular views as our OFOBS camera system is heading down into the Molloy Deep, the deepest known point of the #Arctic (~5500 m)!
-> here at 3100m depth
#PS143/1 #DeepSea
@awi

It was nerve-wracking yesterday to see if the ice would move away from our central HAUSGARTEN, but it did ! So, I am super excited to sample my experiments deployed 9 years ago to study plastics impact on organisms & biogeochemistry of the seafloor,a prime plastic sink. #PS143

Nice views as the CTD is going into the water to measure salinity, temperature, depth, chlorophyll and oxygen profiles throughout the water column and take water samples at defined depths for further analyses that‘ll keep us busy for hours to come.
#PS143/1 #Arctic

Good ‚morning‘ from Polarstern's winch room, where we are currently running a camera transect to study the seafloor communities off the HAUSGARTEN reef. Work like this at ‚night’ gives other people time to process their samples or catch up on sleep. #PS143/1 #Arctic

So excited to start our ROV work tomorrow ! Today we got an introduction to the different parts, protocols & procedures from the ROV team of @GEOMAR_en! Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) allow us to do very targeted sampling & in situ experiments on the deep seafloor. #PS143/1

Great panoramic views from the 'Peildeck' as we steam through the ice to our northernmost #HAUSGARTEN station !
#PS143/1 @awi

In less than an hour the situation can go from to as we head to our northern HAUSGARTEN stations !
#PS143/1 #Arctic

This little flower from the abyss brightened my day: Bathycrinus cf. carpenterii, a species of filter feeding sea lily that are related to starfish and sea urchins and that is one of our Hausgärtners. Caught by multiple corer this specimen came up in great shape ! #PS143/1
@awi

Nice to see land again as we steam towards Svalbard to exchange some personnel! Weather permitting, we hope to welcome the @geomar_en ROV team on board tomorrow . (ROV = remotely operated vehicle, dive robot)
#PS143/1 #Arctic
@awi

On the eve of #midsummer (summer solstice), we were greeted by a beautiful halo !
It is a ring or light that forms around the sun as sunlight refracts off ice crystals in a thin veil of cirrus clouds.
#PS143/1 #Arctic #PolarDevotion
Lydia Schmidt

A glorious morning in the #Arctic (with good visibility )! Looking forward to our last day of fieldwork at the HAUSGARTEN stations off the East Greenland slope! #PS143/1
@awi