Three adventurous Johns Hopkins students - Fatima Malik, Anne Spencer Pratt, and Christine Boucher – and MS in Energy Policy and Climate professor Véronique Bugnion – stepped aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a 111-year-old Norwegian Tall Ship, on July 8, 2025, for a three-week voyage from the Azores in Portugal to Nuuk, Greenland and the experience of a lifetime.
The 300-foot-long, three-masted vessel served as a floating classroom that combined hands-on sail training, ocean science, and education for a group of 39 students and five instructors who represented 10 countries and 15 different nationalities. The tall ship also acted as an ambassador for the United Nations’ Decade of Ocean Science, tasked with creating awareness and inspiring action for ocean sustainability. The vessel is visiting 36 ports on three continents during its 12-month voyage.
The expedition reunited Bugnion and her friend, Kerim Hestnes Nisancioglu, an oceanographer, glaciologist, and a professor of climate dynamics at the University of Bergen in Norway. The former officemates, while PhD students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 25 years ago, found themselves in even closer confines on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl, bunking below deck in a large room in hammocks spaced just inches apart. That close proximity – and the lack of cell service and internet access – allowed the entire group to take team building and collaborative learning to a whole new level, bond over sea shanties and sailing lore, and embrace a rare opportunity to connect historical and modern oceanic research.
“It took me zero seconds to accept Kerim’s offer to join this leg of the adventure,” said Bugnion . “It was a truly epic experience, climbing in rigging, pulling ropes to raise 22 sails. It was a giant ballet of coordination to make the ship turn, to keep it afloat during storms, of which we encountered two significant ones. It was a breath of fresh air to get out of your day-to-day life and go back to basics. We didn’t see land for two weeks. You feel very small, but you also see the incredible beauty around you, and it makes you realize that this is our world, and we need to protect it.”
University of Bergen political science professor Endre Tvinnereim, a Harvard grad and former colleague of Bugnion’s in the private sector, is one of the initiators of the study-at-sea experience that creates a unique space for cross-disciplinary science and cultural exchange. In addition to hauling sails and taking part in eight-hour watch assignments on the ship, students used instrumentation to document the water’s temperature and salinity and the presence of microplastics at varying depths. They also participated in daily lectures on everything from politics and biology to health and policy. Some students worked with data, some studied Greenland sheet ice, some focused on offshore wind, and others concentrated on ecosystems and marine life. For her part, Bugnion drew on her experience as a climate scientist and led a group that was looking at energy policy, climate risk, and climate modeling.
MS in Energy Policy and Climate program student Malik recounted, “If you would have told me when I started this program that I would be up on a yard in the middle of the ocean on a 100-year-old tall ship with my professor – the most incredible human and the best professor I have ever had – I would have told you that you are crazy. It was wild, but super cool. We were a very nerdy but adventurous bunch, and the crew was amazing and so patient with us. This trip showed us how much we don’t know about the earth, how much there is to explore and learn, especially about the world’s oceans. It was interesting to see how people from different parts of the world see different problems. I would 1,000-percent do it again.” She hopes to use her Hopkins degree to increase energy access for developing countries.
“The voyage provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain valuable, interdisciplinary knowledge,” said Boucher, a meteorologist who is completing her Energy Policy and Climate Captone project on offshore wind turbine generation in the North Sea. “Working together with other researchers and scientists allows you to understand that you are not so siloed in your own studies, and those relationships are so important in science. The expedition allowed for a type of collaboration that you would not be able to get in any other way. It was just amazing, and I am still processing all that happened and the ramifications of the knowledge I gained. It’s going to take me six months to formulate a better understanding of how the experience has affected me.”
“My biggest takeaway was the bonds that formed between the students on a human level,” said Bugnion. “It was an extraordinary thing – even though it is wildly uncomfortable at times with sea sickness and frigid temperatures and fear of heights -to have these human experiences, to see the world, to see the love that the sailors had for that ship and the respect for its traditions, and to get a real sense of the climate change that is happening in places like Greenland. It can be demoralizing when you see first-hand the negative impact of climate change. But also working with students, who have fresh perspectives and optimism, is invigorating. I was happy as a clam to go, and if I have the opportunity to go again, I probably won’t say no. I slept better in that hammock than I do at home.”
