Reimagining data collection to safeguard the seas

By the end of this year, the two expedition vessels in Viking’s science-at-sea programme will have accumulated over 2,800 days of continuous scientific activity. This article outlines how Viking has reimagined the pioneering spirit of over a century ago to generate evidence aimed at improving the understanding of – and ultimately safeguarding – the world’s oceanographic environments.

In 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first true global oceanographic expedition, transforming human understanding of the seas. Spanning three and a half years and covering more than 70,000 nautical miles, she mapped the deep ocean and laid the foundation for modern oceanography. More than a century later, Viking has reimagined that pioneering spirit for the 21^st century.

Launched in 2022, Viking’s Polar Class 6 expedition vessels – Viking Octantis and Viking Polaris – combine advanced exploration capability with a permanent, at-sea scientific programme. Designed for polar operations yet small enough to transit the Great Lakes, each vessel serves as a mobile research platform equipped for multidisciplinary environmental observation. By their first major refit in late 2026, the ships will have accumulated over 2,800 days of continuous scientific activity – surpassing the operational duration of Challenger’s legendary voyage.

Sustained observing

The Viking Science Program has a single, uncompromising aim: to generate the evidence needed to understand, and ultimately safeguard, the environments it traverses. As the vessels move from Antarctic to Arctic waters, they operate as continuously moving observatories, logging how natural systems function and how human pressures are reshaping them. Their fixed, repeatable itineraries and near-continuous operations provide the systematic, high-frequency sampling needed to track spatial and temporal change, with year-on-year returns to the same remote sites building an increasingly powerful time series. In doing so, they deliver a style of sustained observing that stands in contrast to many national programmes, which are still largely built around short, one-off research itineraries.

Global scientific collaboration

Each vessel, measuring just over 200 metres in length with a 23m beam, hosts both wet and dry laboratories fitted with a range of specialized equipment to support diverse research operations. A permanent team of Viking scientists operates alongside partner institutions including UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, the University of St Andrews, the University of Western Australia, Cornell University, NOAA and the Norwegian Institute of Water Research (NIVA). The ships carry 398 passengers with a crew of 256.

Off-ship operations are conducted using zodiacs, two 9m rigid-hull jet boats. These deploy a range of instruments – including conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) arrays, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) – for taking water samples and conducting plankton tows. Sonar includes both multibeam (Kongsberg 2040 and WASSP) and sub-bottom systems (INNOMAR) for hydrological mapping and to collect data on benthic habitats, geological features and submerged archaeology. Both ships also support a pair of U-Boat Worx Cruise Sub 7-300 Mk II submersibles for both scientific observations and guest experiences. The submarines are fitted with CTD, platforms for water sampling, very high-resolution image capture and manipulator arms for sampling.

The Viking Science Program integrates research across five principal themes: atmosphere, oceanography, geoscience, biology, and culture. To ensure wide scientific access, all collected data is shared freely both with partners and with global open-access databases such as EMODnet.

Atmospheric weather

The Atmosphere programme is marked by the weekly launch of atmospheric weather balloons as part of the global programme for short-term weather predictions and long-term climate modelling. This data is shared with partners at NOAA and the Canadian Metrological Office, but also forms an important global input to the World Meteorological Organization’s data gathering. In tandem with the weather balloon launches, Viking guests regularly collect cloud observations to contribute to a NASA citizen science initiative: the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) programme. Observations are logged using an app-based tool to supply the ground-truth information on cloud conditions to complement and calibrate satellite-derived data. These observations are particularly important in the snow-covered areas, notably in polar regions where Viking spends over six months a year. 

Both ships are fitted with a Ferrybox system that continuously samples the water through which the ships move. This monitoring is part of a programme run in conjunction with partners at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research. The Ferrybox records temperature, salinity, chlorophyll a, fluorescence (a proxy for phytoplankton biomass), turbidity (linked to suspended particulate matter such as sediment, detritus and plankton) and dissolved oxygen. The water samples are also used for the study of microplastics. In the North American Great Lakes, where the ships spend May to September each year, this data is initially analysed onboard in the wet lab using a Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) spectrometer system. However, further detailed analysis onshore is conducted by partners at Dalhousie University.

Ecosystem monitoring

A core aspect of Viking science is aimed at ecosystem monitoring. This typically involves the use of multiple scientific techniques including BRUVS and high-definition video using ROVs to assess different aspects of marine and freshwater habitats. In the Antarctic, many of the locations that the ships visit have had few, if any, ecosystem evaluations. Therefore, together with partners at the University of Western Australia and the British Antarctic Survey Global Ocean Wildlife Analysis Network, baselines are being established for future monitoring. With over 3,000 submarine dives now completed (to depths inaccessible for divers) in waters that have seen negligible previous operations, the team and the guests have been able to make regular observations on unusual species in different marine habitats. During the first Antarctic season, for example, recordings were made of the elusive Giant Phantom Jellyfish (Stygiomedusa gigantea) and hitherto unrecorded behaviour of icefish in their nursery breeding habitats. Meanwhile, in the Great Lakes, projects using the BRUVS, ROV images and multibeam survey are also evaluating fish behaviour, but this time in relation to the effectiveness of constructed reefs as ecosystem restoration nodes. The optimal recovery conditions of the white fish stock are being assessed through long-term monitoring and comparison of the artificial reefs with natural ones.

In 2024, in collaboration with partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the J. Craig Venter Institute, an onboard PCR laboratory was repurposed and fitted with an Oxford Nanopore DNA sequencer in order to perform real-time environmental DNA sequencing at sea. This facility, the first on any global ocean cruise vessel, allows for samples to be analysed onboard rather than transporting them to shoreside facilities. Samples are collected using towed nets deployed from zodiacs to assess how the base of the food web is changing in response to shifts in oceanic temperature and salinity. The project follows on from a collaboration begun with Fjord Phyto, a NASA-funded programme by Scripps, which enabled guests to participate in research and public education through sampling of polar phytoplankton for genetic population analysis.

Small-area, high-resolution surveys

For the geoscience programme, rather than focusing the use of the multibeam on wide-area mapping, Viking is conducting a series of small-area, high-resolution surveys aimed at understanding seafloor detail. With repeat monitoring, this can reveal areas of change, such as in regions where iceberg scour is an issue, for example. In the Antarctic, where climate change is having some of the most profound impacts globally, marine benthic habitats are being rapidly affected by the changes in both continental ice calving and sea-ice extent. Stations are repeatedly visited each season, and recordings of the changes have sometimes even been made on a weekly basis.

In the Great Lakes, sub-bottom sonar systems are also being used within the geoscience and culture programme to map drowned palaeo-landscapes. These were last seen as land over 7,000 years ago when the first hunter-gatherers migrated across the region following the end of the last ice age. There, and in the Arctic, the offshore mapping is being tied together with shoreline maps made using multispectral drones. These allow for an evaluation of key archaeological sites and an assessment of the impact of climate change, e.g. increased coastal erosion. Recording the archaeology before it is lost forever is a major goal of the programme, and is of great concern not only to local communities but also among Viking guests.

Submarines prove their value

With all the marine-based programmes, the submarines are proving valuable in providing seafloor ground-truth observations at depths down to 300m. For many wreck sites in the Great Lakes, this allows mapping and monitoring of the archaeological sites and their unfortunate demise over time as wood-boring fauna takes its toll. Using the high density of photographic images taken during each dive, structure-from-motion 3D modelling is routinely undertaken in order to monitor the wrecks. The submarines are important tools for this monitoring as the visual recording is backed up by physical water data from the fitted CTDs.

Citizen science

Citizen science is a key component of the guest outreach programme. By participating in the science, and through dedicated science workshops, guests gain hands-on experience in scientific research that fosters lifelong skills. Besides the cloud observations for the NASA initiative, the programme includes a daily wildlife watch for birds and sea mammals, with the results uploaded to global community projects such as ‘eBird’ and ‘iNaturalist’. To date, the Viking Expeditions Biodiversity Project has seen the upload of over 3,000 observations of 1,400 species.

An early project undertaken by Cornell University assessed the value of the citizen science observations in contrast to observations made by trained ornithological observers. The results proved the value of the citizen science, and the programme has since gone on to demonstrate this. In fact, some verified observations have extended the known range for certain species, such as the ‘furthest north’ observation of the Brown Noddy (Anous stolidus).

A modern legacy

Like HMS Challenger in the past, Viking’s science-at-sea initiative is reshaping how ocean research is conducted. The integration of permanent laboratories, multidisciplinary partnerships and active guest participation creates a special, mobile platform for sustained global monitoring, from Pole to Pole. Through its continuous operations, Viking is not only advancing environmental science but also redefining how and where ocean data is gathered, ushering in a new paradigm for – and a new era of – accessible, long-term ocean observation.