Canada's growing profile in Antarctic research may get a boost with expedition in 2026

The commander of the royal stag canadian river naval forces, Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, confirms it's in prelim talks with Chile's naval forces to embark on another Antarctic expedition for two weeks next spring, with a science team on a Chilean ship.

"We have an interest in what's happening at both poles in terms of climate change, the impact that's having."

Topshee initiated a first all-Canadian Antarctic expedition this past February and March with HMCS Margaret Brooke, venturing south of the Antarctic Circle with a group of 15 climate scientists. For a month, they worked on the Southern Ocean taking water, air and sediment samples, mapping the ocean floor and sampling snow and air for contaminants.

"When I went down to visit the Margaret Brooke in Antarctica this year, it was amazing to see how excited they were at the potential," Topshee said. "I think the ability to support research like that is really powerful."

Royal Canadian Navy eyes return to Antarctica

The prospect of a second, shorter mission with the Chileans was welcomed by polar scientists at a large conference organized by the non-profit organization ArcticNet that brought together scientists and policymakers this week in Calgary.

David Hik, chief scientist at Polar Knowledge Canada, called the 2025 expedition "a very significant event in the overarching history of Canada's involvement in Antarctic science," and he said Canada is close to formalizing a framework for Canadian Antarctic research, as well as working toward becoming a voting member of the Antarctic Treaty.

The Canadian Antarctic Research Expedition (CARE 2025), led by Natural Resources Canada scientist Thomas James, was "a solid indicator of our capacity, our commitment and our opportunities for the future," Hik told those attending the ArcticNet annual scientific meeting.

James has been asked to put together another science team for the possible 2026 return to Antarctica.

The first expedition was part "science diplomacy," he said, "to say, 'OK, Canada is here in Antarctica, and we've come here on our own steam," asserting the country's ambition for a bigger role in Antarctica.

At the ArcticNet conference in Calgary, the CARE 2025 team presented some preliminary findings from the volume of work collected during the expedition earlier this year.

Sandy Steffen, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said some of their samples revealed evidence of microplastics, in spite of Antarctica's remoteness.

Contaminant levels were low overall, but microplastic fibres found in water samples showed levels slightly higher than in Canadian Arctic waters.

"They should not be there, and so while the levels are reasonably low, that is somewhat concerning that we're still finding them in this pristine region," Steffen said, adding that the fibres had potentially travelled a long way in the atmosphere to the Antarctic.

Steffen's colleague, Liisa Jay, who has been conducting analysis on the samples at a lab in Egbert, Ont., said the study of contaminants in the Antarctic is relatively new compared with similar research in the Arctic.

Some of the samples so far show chemical contaminants at much lower levels than in the Arctic, "so that's a great news story for the Antarctic," Jay said.

CARE 2025 was a rare opportunity for Canadian research and was the first time with the Canadian navy in Antarctica.

Alexandre Normandeau, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada, and a team brought up 30, metre-long sediment cores from the the bottom of the ocean floor, transporting them back to Bedford, N.S., where half of them went through a CAT scan.

The resulting images show layers of sediment settled over an estimated thousand years, and the next phase of analysis will date each of the layers to provide a chronology of glacial retreat in the areas where they were sampled.

"To model the future of how glaciers will evolve, we need to understand how glaciers have behaved in the past with similar or less intense climate change," he said. "Then we can have more accurate models about future climate change."

Normandeau suggests that Canada is enjoying a "moment" in Antarctic research.

"I definitely think we are," he said, reflecting on the expedition in March. "Now it seems like the navy is interested in going back, so we're very hopeful that this is the building of an Antarctica program for Canada."

The scientists are still at preliminary stages of analysis on the volume of samples collected, but they plan to publish peer-reviewed results, adding to the international body of Antarctic research.

"We're interested in going down and comparing what they're doing in the Antarctic every year to see if that illuminates what they are doing near the North Pole," Topshee said.

"We're seeing climate change move very quickly in the Arctic," he said. "Everything that we can do to help understand and better predict what's going to happen up there is really going to help us enable the transition for the people of the North."

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