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Hi, I'm Eddie. I'm a journalist, based in London but hailing from the North of England. I’m an ordinary citizen but I'm really excited to have been selected for an extraordinary journey to the Arctic to measure the impact climate change is having on our planet. I’ll also be telling my story on this historic expedition as an Ocean Warrior ambassador and I need your help raising funds to make that happen.
Before I set sail, and as a way to raise funds, I'm planning to hike England's Coast to Coast path, starting 1 June 2023. It begins at the Irish Sea at St Bees in Cumbria and continues for 186 miles across three National Parks (Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors) to finish at the North Sea at Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire. Walking from one ocean to another seemed like an appropriate way to raise funds for the voyage.
[EDIT - 27 June 2023: Happy to say I completed the Coast to Coast on 10 June! What a journey. Fundraising for Ocean Warrior will continue ahead of the expedition]
Any backing you can spare will be greatly appreciated and all go towards Ocean Warrior. The support is needed to fund the costs of the expedition, clothing & equipment needed to work on board the boat, including specialist sailing kit from official corporate sponsor Henri Lloyd, travel to and from the embarkation port and insurance.
So, why Ocean Warrior?
I love hiking, camping and being outdoors, and I've completed a number of long-distance trails across the UK. The sounds of birds singing in the early dawn, the prospect of spotting an elusive otter or a magnificent white-tailed eagle and walking through forests, across rivers, on beaches and over mountain ranges. That is what a multi-day hike is all about. A reminder of our place in the world and also our insignificance in the face of the raw power of nature.
It is easy to become dismayed by what humans, as caretakers of the planet, have allowed to happen to that natural world in just the past 100 years. Globally, according to the National Oceanography Centre, more than 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, with more than 10 million tonnes of it entering the ocean.
Closer to home, researchers at the Natural History Museum said that the UK had 'led the world' in destroying the natural environment. "Centuries of farming, building and industry have made the UK one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe," the museum added.
The RSPB also reported that our skies are emptying, with more than 40 million birds disappearing from the UK since 1970.
And Isabella Tree writes in her brilliant book, 'Wilding', since the 1930s we have lost a staggering 97% of our wildflower meadows in the UK, and up to 90% of wetland in England alone since the Industrial Revolution, not to mention a huge swathes of our hedgerows (75,000 miles lost between 1939 and the 1990s). Moths have declined 88%, ground beetles 72% and butterflies by 76%.
That is not to mention our rivers and seas are too dangerous to swim in as raw sewage is released unchecked in our waterways at an alarming rate.
We are in danger of being a very lonely species as we lose more and more biodiversity. But as the recent David Attenborough BBC series celebrating the wonders of British wildlife showed, we can make changes easily if there is the will to do it and nature can recover extremely quickly.
If we are going to turn the tide on climate change, then we need accurate data to know exactly what is going on in places such as the Arctic, which has always acted as an early indicator of the health of the planet.
And this is where Ocean Warrior comes in.
Ocean Warrior will be led by Jim McNeill, one of the world’s most respected and experienced explorers. In September, we'll undertake a Foundation Expedition, circumnavigating the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, sailing up to 4,000 nautical miles in one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas. It will be a test bed for our oceanographic scientific data-gathering abilities in advance of a 10-year programme to measure, benchmark, monitor and record change on our #Resolute Expedition.
In June 2024, my crew will be setting off on a 10,000 nautical mile journey from Global Warrior's polar base in Svalbard, Norway, travelling south and around the UK, where the expedition picks up scientific equipment and officially launches in Plymouth, before heading up to Iceland, around Greenland and on to Resolute Bay in High Arctic Canada. The journey will be carbon-neutral and powered by wind on the SV Linden, Europe's largest three-masted wooden schooner.
As an Ocean Warrior crew member, I’ll be trained in rigorous data collection, including measuring sea levels, sea ice thickness, examining Phytoplankton as a barometer of ocean health, logging any plastic pollution and wildlife numbers, as well as many other important on-the-ground measurements. This will give our scientific partners, including NASA and the European Space Agency, accurate and up-to-date data to measure the real effects of climate change. They have a critical need for actual measurements taken on the ground to calibrate and validate autonomous data-gathering equipment such as buoys and satellites. Without this, their data and conclusions could be completely wrong. Our measurements – in areas where scientists simply do not go – will provide an immediacy science cannot match and also reach a wider audience.
Get in touch with any questions. Happy to have conversations to explain more about the expedition.
Or to find out more yourself, visit:
Jim McNeill on BBC News:
Global Warrior story:
Follow me on Instagram:
@devlineddie