Research project Ecosystem mapping in the Central Arctic Ocean

The lack of knowledge on the CAO ecosystem impedes any assessment of the sustainability of potential future fisheries in the CAO. To reduce the existing lack of knowledge, the project has collected new ecosystem data during the international MOSAiC expedition (2019-2020) and the Swedish SAS-Oden expedition (2021). Methods used were water-column acoustics, deep-sea video recording, and organism, fossil and eDNA sampling targeting fish, squid and zooplankton. Further ecosystem data (physical, chemical, biological) were collected by the project’s scientists in collaboration with other scientists onboard of the two expeditions. A metadata database containing lists of all collected samples and data that are relevant for future fishery assessment studies will be delivered to the European Commission at the end of the project.