A MAJOR environmental expedition taking citizen scientists to the Arctic by sea has been postponed by a year, the Princetown organisers have confirmed - but a shorter version will take place this year.

The Ocean Warrior trip was due to sail from Plymouth, via Svalberg in Norway, in July to research climate change through ocean monitoring.

The MV Linden has been chartered by Jim McNeill and his Ice Warrior charity which trains citizen scientists for environmental expeditions in the Arctic to gather scientific evidence alongside professionals. The sailing ship will still sail this year but on a shorter trip in September to Svalberg to test equipment for evidence gathering.

Another key role of Jim’s expeditions is to educate the wider world and national journalists will also join the new trip to work out how to best set up communications to tell the world what he is doing.

He said: ‘It is unfortunate that I’ve had to delay the full expedition, which was due to set out this summer. However, we’re running a foundation expedition instead, which trials scientific equipment which sucks up seawater and measures pollutants like carbon.

‘It’s an important part of our work to educate the ordinary person to do the extraordinary and that’s where we train citizen scientists in teamwork an survival skills on Dartmoor so they can operate out of their comfort zones in environments like the Artic and carry out climate change research along with our scientist partners. So, live online streaming tests will also take place on two circumnavigations of Svalberg.’