The project “Observing the Ocean from Race Yachts CP1756” of Dr. Toste Tanhua (GEOMAR) and Dr. Stefan Raimund (SubCtech) were funded by the Future Ocean Excellence Cluster for new instruments and my PostDoc Position to measure Ocean properties from Volvo Ocean 65 (LWL 20 m) Race yachts.

Who am I, you are asking?

I am Dr.-Ing. Sören Gutekunst (GEOMAR), who will analyze the samples as well as data and follow the yachts around the globe – also for public outreach activities as e.g. Ocean Summits. I did my PhD in the field of materials science focussed on biophysics of cells and their interaction with plastics (particles/substrates). I gained further experience in marine science during expeditions (SWERUS-C3 and Meteor M-130) and look forward to reach people around the globe in this fascinating experience for Ocean Reasearch.

We teamed up with Volvo Cars and Volvo Ocean Race in this sustainability project to develop a new analysis for micro-plastics (size < 5 mm) and a newly constructed OceanPack to measure:

• Partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2)
• Sea Surface Salinity (SSS)
• Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
• Chlorophyll a

Volvo financially supports this project with 100 € from each Volvo V90 Cross Country Ocean Race Edition.

Greetings to our partners from NOAA and JCOMMOPS, which are connected to the drifter releases and meteorological data acquisition but more about this and our work later.

Find the oceanographic data here:

https://data.nodc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.nodc:0170967