Andrew here!

The first full days in Skalanes have been action packed with a lot of flexibility involved. We will be spending the next 11 days here, and we are joining a group of six student from Glasgow, Scotland, who have been working on various projects for the past five weeks, including tracking the arctic foxes in the area and measuring how rising temperatures affect the local seabirds.

On the first day, we unpacked, organized, and did a bit of hiking. The goal was to get some ground points to measure the accuracy of the digital reconstructions we make with our drones by measuring coordinates at various waterfalls on the Ytri-Sanda, one of the rivers we are going to survey. A secondary goal of the hikes were to explore the area, and see some of the local wildlife, including Puffins!

Our second day was spent in seyðisfjörður, gathering water samples. Based on when we could get access to the fishing boat, we ended up taking all of our water samples (and subsequently filtering them) in one day instead of two, and this resulted in a midnight party calibrating the sonde, our water probe.

After taking the water samples, we had to quickly get them back on shore in order to filter them before the DNA degraded.

PS: Seth got a speeding ticket 🙂

QOTD: “Your shower status doesn’t concern me that much”

-Andrew