Aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl
A testimonial by Ariane Cornerier, PhD student at Université Paris-Saclay
My name is Ariane Cornerier, and I am a PhD student at Université Paris-Saclay. My research focuses on marine rewilding initiatives in Europe, drawing on environmental history and political science. It was my laboratory director who told me that Université Paris-Saclay was offering an international mobility programme in partnership with the European University Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH), to sail and conduct scientific research aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl. I was immediately surprised by such an unusual opportunity. I applied, without quite realising what lay ahead.
Stepping aboard: a world to discover
We embarked on 3 August in Nuuk, Greenland. Walking up the small wooden gangway and setting foot on deck for the first time was strangely moving. The bosun, Anna, welcomed us with a touch of humour: aboard, she would be both our mother and our father. We were each assigned a number - I was number 2 - and a hammock to hang from the corresponding hooks. In that collective excitement, it slowly sank in: we were about to get pretty intimate with people we had only just met.
The Statsraad Lehmkuhl is the world’s largest three-masted sailing ship: 98 metres long, 22 sails, 22,000 metres of rigging, and a mast rising 48 metres above the waterline. A century-old, legendary vessel that carries within it a part of human history. I felt honoured to be aboard.
Life on board: discipline, watches, and wonder
Life on board was organised almost like a military operation. We were divided into three groups to rotate watches around the clock, seven days a week. I was part of the Blue Watch. Each day meant at least eight hours on watch: hoisting sails, manning the helm, scanning the horizon, completing fire safety rounds, combined with two or three hours of mandatory lectures on taxonomy, Arctic geopolitics, oceanography, maritime law, and more.
My favourite posting was climbing the masts to furl the sails. We would make our way up through the rigging and reach wooden platforms suspended high above the deck. Getting to the top gave me a rush of adrenaline, a mix of fear and pure wonder. It was also the best spot to take in the view: distant icebergs, sunlight glittering on the waves, and the cetaceans accompanying us: sperm whales, fin whales, minke whales. I had this rare sensation of being at one with the ship, its every movement through the water like a calm, necessary breath.
The Northwest Passage: when the Arctic decides
The expedition’s goal was to sail through the Northwest Passage, a first for this vessel. But just as we were about to enter Canadian territorial waters, the captain announced that Canada had refused entry. Ice melt was exceptionally rapid that season, icebergs were multiplying, and since the ship was not an icebreaker, the risks were deemed too great. There was no question of having to organise a rescue operation for over a hundred people in the middle of the Northwest Passage.
We were all stunned. None of us had imagined that an adventure planned for months could come to an abrupt halt like this. In that sombre atmosphere, one of the students, Alì, pulled out his ukulele and played What a Wonderful World. It gave us all a little lift. We eventually set course for St John’s, Newfoundland, cutting the expedition short by a week but maintaining some coherence with our Arctic-focused programme.
Looking back, I think this twist taught us something essential: even the most carefully prepared logistics, two years in the making, remain subject to the unexpected. The Arctic Ocean and international law reminded us that adventure also means accepting that you cannot always control the course.
Science at sea: learning to collect, to observe
The Statsraad Lehmkuhl is a genuine floating laboratory. Autonomous sensors continuously measure temperature, pressure, salinity, currents, and underwater sound. During scientific stations, when the ship stopped for several hours, we took an active part in the sampling. The central instrument was the “rosette”: a kind of bucket with 12 compartments capable of going to 1,500 metres down to collect water at different layers of the ocean.
What fascinated me most was the environmental DNA technique: you can identify which species are present in an ecosystem simply from the genetic traces they leave in the water. I also took part in microplastics sampling: filtering seawater through meshes of different diameters to detect plastic particles. A hands-on task that made you feel genuinely useful.
And then there was this moment: the rosette surfaced after hours underwater, and we found inside its samples a small lanternfish. Matte black, vivid green eyes, and bioluminescent blue spots shimmering across its skin. It had died on the way up, and I felt genuinely sorry for it. But I suppose that is how scientific discoveries are made. I understood that day that an estimated 91% of ocean species remain unknown to science.
What I learned: the real lessons of the expedition
Adaptability and collective resilience. When the route changed, when gastroenteritis swept through the ship, when the forest fires near St John’s sent smoke drifting out to sea, we held together. Living in a confined community forces you to cultivate solidarity, humility, and patience. The ship was a metaphor for the planet: limited resources, a restricted space, a shared responsibility.
The value of disconnection. There was no internet connection on board. In the modern era, being collectively offline is a rare thing. And that disconnection created something precious: a quality of attention to one another, deep conversations that probably would not have happened otherwise, and strong bonds forged through shared watches and nights swaying in hammocks.
The Arctic crisis, felt from the inside. The lectures on board helped me understand Arctic amplification: warming in the region is two to three times faster than the global average. Accelerating sea ice loss, thawing permafrost releasing vast quantities of greenhouse gases, disrupted food chains, geopolitical tensions over newly accessible resources… Navigating those waters while studying these issues gave everything a concrete, almost visceral dimension.
Rethinking science itself. This was perhaps the deepest lesson. The Inuit and Sámi members of the teaching team confronted us with the decolonisation of scientific knowledge and practice. I came to understand that certain scientific studies have led to Western management of marine resources at the expense of Arctic peoples whose ways of life depended on the continuity of ancestral practices. This confrontation was both essential and unsettling, as it called into question the very foundations of our academic training.
I realised that I am not a neutral observer, but a facilitator whose responsibility is to dismantle hierarchies of knowledge. And that the transformation of the Arctic does not depend on technological innovation, but on a radical shift in our values and in the way we produce knowledge.
What stays with me
On 12 August, for my 28th birthday, I climbed to the top of the main mast, the Main Royal, 48 metres above the waterline. Standing in full sunlight, with a 360° view of sky, ocean, and ship below, I watched fin whales escorting us along the hull, their powerful blows still discernible from up there. It felt as though the natural world was offering me a gift that cannot be bought.
I also carry the nostalgia of that collective life, shaped by the rhythm of watches and shanties - the sea songs we all sang together on deck in the evenings. In those moments there was something rare: a sense of connection to centuries of seafaring, and to a hundred human beings sharing the same improbable adventure.
This expedition has made me want to do it again, perhaps even to volunteer as crew on a scientific sailing ship. More than anything, it reminded me that there are ways of learning that no lecture hall can replicate: through immersion, through shared physical effort, through direct encounter with the elements and with one another.
I am deeply grateful to EUGLOH and to Université Paris-Saclay for making this possible. I hope these scientific expeditions continue to take young researchers on board because sailing through the very waters that are the subject of your research is an incomparable way of understanding what is truly at stake.
This text is part of the “My EUGLOH story” series, in which members of the EUGLOH community talk about their EUGLOH experience.
