“Our goal was not to discover a new island,” Morten Rasch, a polar researcher from an Arctic station in Greenland, told Reuters. “We just went to take samples.”
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The discovery of an island exposed by the movement of a glacial layer comes at a time when the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are waging a struggle for Arctic domination, where melting ice is creating new fishing areas and sea routes.
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The researchers originally thought they had reached the island of Oodaqq, which was discovered by a Danish research team in 1978. “Everyone was happy to find what we originally thought was Oodaaq,” said CNN Swiss businesswoman Christiane Leister, who funded the expedition. “It’s like in the past, when explorers thought they landed somewhere, but in fact they were completely different,” he adds.
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The island has an average of about 30 meters, the highest point above the surface reaches a height of three meters. The polar explorers propose to name it Greenlandic “Qeqertaq Avannarleq”, which means “Northmost Island”. The surface of the island is formed by the mud of the seabed and the moraine – soil and stones left behind by moving glaciers.
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“(Island) meets the criteria. And so it is the northernmost island, “says René Forsberg, a professor at the Danish National Space Institute. He further states that the discovery will not affect the change of the territorial claim on Greenland belonging to Denmark. “These small islands are coming and going,” he added, referring to the possibility that the island could disappear again under ice in the near future.
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Although the Arctic is struggling with the rapid melting of glaciers as a result of the climate crisis, scientists say the island’s new discovery is unrelated to the phenomenon.
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