Departure of the second leg of US GEOTRACES cruise GP17 in the Southern Ocean

GEOTRACES cruise GP17-ANT departed from Punta Arenas (Chile) on 29 November and will arrive in Lyttleton (New Zealand) on 28 January 2024. Sailing on the RV/IB Nathaniel B. Palmer will be 35 scientists, mostly from the United States, led by cruise leaders Peter Sedwick (Old Dominion University), Phoebe Lam (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Robert Sherrell (Rutgers University). The cruise is supported by the US National Science Foundation and will complete the GP17 section, which was initiated by cruise GP17-OCE from 2 December 2023 to 25 January 2023 aboard RV Roger Revelle.

Major science foci of GP17-ANT include: (1) Antarctic margin sources of trace elements and isotopes (TEIs), including glacial meltwater/circulation, sediments and sea ice; (2) transformations and biological impacts of these TEIs over the Antarctic margin and in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC); (3) modification of Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) over the Antarctic margin in the context of the “lower cell” of the meridional overturning circulation; and (4) ground-truthing and refinement of TEI paleoproxies for the Antarctic margins and ACC.