The major sorties to date include sailing to Greenland in 2010, Jan Mayen in 2012, Svalbard in 2015 and Iceland in 2019. From 2015-2020, we have spent a total of four winters in Arctic Norway tracking orcas and humpback whales. Additionally, we have done countless North Sea crossings and year-round sailing in western Norway to fine tune the vessel and our skills. As we have gained experience, we have been able to undertake more complex field work together with a growing network of scientific partners.
Four winter seasons have been spent tracking orcas and humpback in the Northern Norway. This has also included 4 round-trips from the Barba HQ in Stavanger to Troms / Finnmark in the North. This has given hard earned experience with both sailing in Arctic conditions, as well as facilitating for scientists and photographers when getting up close and personal with the apex predator of the sea, the orca.
The Arctic Whale expedition was a joint venture with Turnss. We sailed from Stavanger Norway, to Húsavík Iceland, where we spent 6 weeks working with the University of Iceland and the Whale Wise team. The target species were humpback whales as well as blue whales.
Our longest expedition to date, and a scouting mission and stepping stone for the upcoming Arctic Sense expedition. Onboard crew. Andreas B. Heide, Daniel Hug, Ivan Kutasov, Jon Grantangen and Terry Ward.
This was a three week expedition sailing from Stavanger, to the Arctic Island of Jan Mayen and back. We successfully scaled the 2077 meter tall volcano Beerenberg and got valuable insights about the area for future expeditions to the island. The expedition was led by Andreas and the climb was led by Henrik Wold Nilsen. Additional crew members were Hanne Bowitz and Jon Grantangen.
Our first proper expedition, sailing into the icy waters of Greenland. It was the journey that sparked it all. In the early days we were limited to a usb GPS antenna for navigation, and we were short on just about everything but the will to explore. The expedition was lead by Andreas B. Heide and Ketil Christensen, accompanied by Daniel O´Brien, Glenn Kvernmo and Nikolai Munch.
You can follow the evolution of Barba with blog posts dating back to 2009. From the early days of literally learning the ropes to our current phase in the development where we have the increased ability and capacity to prioritize science and storytelling.
Our work
