After 10 days at sea, the international E(ddies)GC team completed its research expedition in the waters off East Greenland. Led by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), the E(ddies)GC project received funded access to the research vessel Þórunn Þórðardóttir through the first AQUARIUS Transnational Access Call.
From 25 August to 3 September 2026, the international team investigated ocean eddies and their interaction with the East Greenland Current, combining ship-based observations with satellite data, autonomous underwater gliders and surface drifters to collect observations of this dynamic and rapidly changing environment. Alongside its scientific objectives, the expedition also became part of an unexpected exchange between two international research teams, demonstrating how Transnational Access projects can start new collaborations and generate outcomes beyond the scope of the original project.
From glider deployment to a new collaboration
A few weeks before the E(ddies)GC expedition set sail, members of the team boarded the Norwegian icebreaker RV Kronprins Haakon to deploy two VLIZ autonomous underwater gliders, Yoko and Tsuno. The deployment, in mid-July, was made possible through collaboration with two major research initiatives: the ERC-funded ROVER project (Resilient northern overturning in a warming climate), led by Prof. Kjetil Våge of the University of Bergen, and EGNOG (East Greenland Nordic seas Gateway), funded by the US National Science Foundation and led by Nicholas Foukal of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. During that same cruise, the ROVER/EGNOG team recovered and serviced several oceanographic moorings, but the most coastal one, deployed the previous year, could not be located.
Over the following 54 days at sea, Yoko and Tsuno logged an impressive 455 cycles through the water column, measuring temperature, salinity, oxygen and currents, with most dives reaching depths of 1000 m. Combined, the two gliders covered nearly 910 km of vertical sampling, and the E(ddies)GC team later recovered them successfully.
But the gliders weren’t the only story to come out of that stretch of ocean. Weeks after the ROVER/EGNOG cruise, the E(ddies)GC expedition picked up the search and located the missing mooring, found nearly 12 km from where it had been originally deployed, apparently dragged by an iceberg. The find preserved a full, uninterrupted year of observations of the East Greenland Coastal Current at 71°N, a rare and valuable scientific record.
Together, these episodes highlight what’s possible when research infrastructure is genuinely shared. Through initiatives like AQUARIUS, Transnational Access brings together researchers, vessels and expeditions in ways that go beyond any single project’s original plan, creating room for new collaborations, shared resources, and scientific outcomes no one could have predicted at the outset.