2020 began as a normal year for the Dr Fridtjof Nansen, the only marine research vessel to fly the United Nations flag. With an ambitious schedule of survey voyages, the Nansen was meant to sail along West Africa, collecting data off the coast and in the deep-seas for its research into the state of marine resources and the health of our oceans, a mission it has held since 1975.
As one of the most advanced marine research vessels in the world, the Dr Fridtjof Nansen has explored some of the least studied waters on the planet, including those around Africa, Latin America, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the high-seas.
The vessel is an integral part of the EAF-Nansen Programme, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and led by FAO, with the scientific and technical support of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR). For more than four decades, this collaboration has been successful in building the capacity of marine scientists from developing countries and from around the world.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, 21 scientists from Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia and Spain, in addition to the Norwegian scientific core team and crew, were already part way through a voyage off the coast of northwest Africa. To support the improved management of fisheries, this particular mission was meant to study ecosystems and survey transboundary demersal resources - fish species that live near seabeds and are distributed in waters of various countries.
The outbreak, however, quickly caused ports to close, and the Nansen and its crew had to radically change plans. Unable to continue with its research voyage, the Dr Fridtjof Nansen was recalled to its home port, thousands of kilometres away in Bergen, Norway.
The Dr Fridtjof Nansen has sailed countless times around the globe, and its crew and research scientists believed they had seen it all. But even this 45-year-old programme found itself in unchartered waters with this situation.
As the COVID-19 outbreak turned into a pandemic and more and more borders closed to stop the spread of the virus, the vessel and its crew needed a plan for getting the scientists home.
“This unprecedented scenario immediately mobilised the Programme’s partners to take quick action and bring the vessel’s crew and scientists safe to port,” commented FAO’s Merete Tandstad, EAF-Nansen Programme Coordinator.