"Do you all know what you need to do with the water sample when you get back?" Torkel Gissel Nielsen, who teaches marine environment on the BEng programme in Fisheries Technology, has to make sure that the students on board the boat know exactly what is expected of them for the day's assignment.
We are heading out into the inlet from the port of Sisimiut, which is an important base for the Greenlandic educational environment, and a busy fishing town which is home to Greenland's largest prawn factory. There are three DTU students on board the vessel: Alex Ingerslev Rump, Jacob Estrup Vedelsby, and Gilbert Nimskov, who are all in their third semester. Today, they have brought a CTD (conductivity, temperature, and depth) device, which measures temperature, oxygen, and salinity levels in the water, among other things. Together, they lower the device into the sea and take water samples from the surface and the seabed, while the conversation switches between talking about their studies and their social lives.
"What fascinates me most about the sea is what we're actually doing right now: Understanding what is going on beneath the surface and the interaction between the physical, chemical, and biological elements. It's all about how salinity, water, and temperature affect which creatures live in the sea. For me, it's very important that the marine environment is healthy, and that future generations will also be able to benefit from the sea—perhaps even more so than we're doing at present," says Alex Ingerslev Rump.
