Sun Yat-sen University Polar. [Photo/en.xmu.edu.cn]
Shi Jingwen, a research team member from Xiamen University (XMU), recently completed the 2025 Arctic Ocean scientific expedition aboard Sun Yat-sen University Polar, bringing an end to a mission that covered 11,120 nautical miles, including 1,659 nautical miles through ice-covered waters and reaching as far as 81.6°N.
Over the 76-day journey, Shi, a 2023 PhD candidate under Professor Cai Minggang at the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, carried out comprehensive surveys of the open-ocean environment.
The laboratory processes Arctic plankton samples. [Photo/en.xmu.edu.cn]
His work involved collecting samples of emerging pollutants across multiple media, including the atmosphere, sea ice, seawater, and plankton. Shi personally gathered nearly 1,000 samples.
Shi noted that these multi-media samples will help researchers better understand the biogeochemical behavior and controlling mechanisms of new pollutants in a changing climate, offering essential data for Arctic development, resource use, and environmental governance.
Shi collects ice-core samples in the Arctic. [Photo/en.xmu.edu.cn]
Although he had previously participated in two scientific coastal surveys, working at ice stations presented an entirely new challenge. On the vast polar ice sheet, he completed tasks such as drilling for ice-cores and collecting surface snow and melt-pond water, while also assisting Ocean University of China by deploying ice-based profiling buoys.
This year's expedition was conducted on Sun Yat-sen University Polar, China's first polar research vessel to be independently owned and operated by a domestic university. As the second Arctic Ocean scientific expedition organized by Sun Yat-sen University, the expedition marked the first collaboration between the two universities in polar research.
