NEW YORK, NY, September 21, 2025—In an event that kicked off Climate Week, New York City, leaders in the Seabed Curtain were invited to speak at The Explorer’s Club Headquarters in a panel discussion hosted by Caitlin Saks, Senior Producer of PBS NOVA. Co-leads John Moore and Marianne Hagen were joined by David Holland from New York University to discuss the importance of glacial preservation and the role of Seabed Anchored Curtains. The Seabed Curtain Project is run with collaborations made through the UArctic Thematic Network of Frozen Arctic Conservation.
During the evening, panelists discussed the impending melt of critical glaciers and ice sheets—such as West Antarctica Thwaites glacier—and what can be done to prevent them from collapsing. Researching and providing solutions is necessary to slow down harmful and costly sea level rise, securing a safer future for people and environments across the globe. Seabed Anchored Curtains are a promising option that must be researched as a tool that can be used in the future if we do not manage to minimize CO2 emissions or slow melting ice sheets in other ways.
The panel discussion was followed by a reception, where post-doc Mainak Mondel from NYU, working with Holland, debuted 3D models of the ocean floor near the intended curtain site, showing the sheer scale of both Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier and the curtain itself.
Prior to the event, Moore, Hagen, and Lars Kullerud, UArctic President, were interviewed by Miles O’Brien, PBS Science Correspondent. O’Brien, along with a small film crew, will be joining Holland on an upcoming exploratory voyage to Antarctica, where ocean monitoring moorings will be deployed in the Thwaites Trough, collecting information that is vital for the next phase of technology development in the Seabed Curtain Project.
The upcoming 2026 expedition will be in collaboration with the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI). Initial data results will be collected from the ocean moorings in February 2026, and full results will be retrieved one year after the deployment of the equipment. You can learn more about the upcoming trip to Antarctica and other curtain project updates with our other news and updates.
