The Cook Ice Ecosystems and Sediments (COOKIES) voyage onboard CSIRO research vessel (RV) Investigator is a 56-day research voyage to Antarctica to study the Cook Ice Shelf marine region, a globally significant but poorly studied region in East Antarctica. On the voyage, a multinational research team will investigate the region’s ice-sheet stability and ocean evolution, and their impact on marine ecosystem functionality over the last 1 million years.

This voyage is supported by the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiatives Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (Project Number SR200100008), the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (DP250100886), the COOKIES GEOTRACES process study GIpr13, Horizon Europe European Research Council (ERC) Frontier Research Synergy Grants, OGS – Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) (Project Number SR200100005) and by a grant of sea time on RV Investigator from the CSIRO Marine National Facility (MNF).

Researchers participating in the voyage are supported by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania (Australia), James Cook University (Australia), University of Technology Sydney (Australia), Bureau of Meteorology (Australia), National Institute of Oceanography and Geophysics (Italy), the Institute of Polar Science of the National Research Council (Italy), University of Siena (Italy), University of Exeter (UK), The University of Southampton (UK), Colgate University (USA) and NORCE (Norway).

Follow our blog of the COOKIES voyage to learn more about the important research being undertaken.