International News

LONDON, Oct 18 (APP/AFP): More than 50 researchers from 30 countries are to carry out the first scientific full circumnavigation of Antarctica in an attempt to measure pollution and climate change, with the official launch held on Monday. The international team will cruise on Russian research vessel Akademik Treshnikov, leaving Cape Town on December 20 and returning on March 18 next year, braving hostile conditions in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of humankind’s effect on the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition (ACE) will be the first scientific mission to study all the major islands in the vast ocean, as well as the Antarctic land mass. “The idea is to visit the islands around Antarctica, which is scientifically extraordinarily interesting,” businessman Frederik Paulsen, a founder of the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) and ACE instigator, told AFP at the project’s official launch in London. “The changes that are going on around Antarctica are less well understood than in the Arctic and the islands… (and) are a thermometer of what’s going on.