Update on International Nutrient Voyage (INIV)

Like many of you we have been closely monitoring the spread of COVID-19 around the world and considering the potential impacts to our voyage, teams, and participants. As we near the voyage there remains significant ongoing uncertainty around the opening of borders in Australia and the ability for participating agencies to permit international travel.

Over the past few months, we have been in discussions with the Marine National Facility (MNF) – operators of the RV Investigator – regarding possible COVID-19 impacts to our voyage and exploring a range of mitigation strategies. After some serious consideration we have decided it is in the best interest of the project for us to defer the voyage to a later date when the impacts from COVID-19 may be less pronounced.

This deferral was granted after Marine National Facility acting Director, Dr Tara Martin, passed down the following recommendation.

With Australia’s international borders still largely closed and your voyage completely relying on personnel arriving from multiple countries, it is currently highly likely the voyage would be restricted in its ability to successfully deliver against the voyage objectives. As such it is the MNF’s recommendation that your voyage be rescheduled to a period in the forward schedule.

To best manage the current and near-term potential impacts COVID-19 poses, alongside the schedule management from the MNF , International Nutrient Inter-comparison Voyage (INIV) will be deferred for approximately 1 year. INIV is now being planned for April/May 2023, with the exact dates to be released in January 2022.

We would like to thank all our participants and stakeholders for working with us as we manage these challenging times, and to the MNF for accommodating our request at a time of significant pressure on seagoing operations globally.