Geology in Gardar, opus II

France Pinczon du Sel — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:00:00 GMT

Léonie, Aurore and I meet up with Eric, his crew and Vagabond in Narsarsuaq, having moved from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. We step off our friend Hubert's Pilatus PC-12 onto the Greenland tarmac, and after a joyful evening and night on Vagabond, its super-pilots Georges and Sophie take off again with our four delighted Saint-Pierrais for a lovely return flight! Our family crew is ready to welcome the geologists.

This year is very different from summer 2023, even if Laurent Geoffroy is still the leader. The instruments to be set up on last year's well-studied terrain arrived by cargo ship in spring. The instruments? Stations equipped with seismometers, to detect the earth's internal movements, to be installed for one year on carefully studied sites, constituting a system of two transects over a hundred kilometers.

We are now in phase 2 of the investigation that begun last summer into the astonishing formation of this south of Greenland region!

As the cargo ship has dropped off the IPEV container with all the equipment in Narsaq, we converge there after each installation. Vagabond becomes heavier at each rotation when carrying 3 stations: concrete blocks and batteries are our mainstays as the equipment is loaded and unloaded! There are 15 in all. Laurent is accompanied by Christian Schiffer, a geophysicist expert with these seismometers. He is German and Danish, and lives in Sweden. The 6 of us enjoy a friendly and active atmosphere on board Vagabond!

After three weeks, all 15 stations are installed and Christian is leaving. It's time for us to welcome on board Marie and Charlie, a fine artistic team of women who have come to immerse themselves in the place and in the feelings of our daughters, in order to feed the script of their animated film project: the story of a little girl who embarks on a scientific ship with her captain father, in the Arctic...!

Laurent, always on the lookout for geological clues, takes us to the paradisiacal bay of Tasiussaq, reached after a slow progression through the luminous mist of an iceberg-laden fjord. After visiting an isolated farm, the girls go for a swim in a low-lying lake, while Laurent and Eric take a geological tour of the vast bay.

A few days before our departure by plane, leaving Vagabond wisely moored in the port of Narsaq under the watchful eye of our friends Paul and Monika, a moderate earthquake - a rare occurrence in the region - is shaking us... less than 8 days after the instruments had been installed. How wonderful!

About Protero-Litho2 project.

Earthquake South Greenland

Eric Brossier — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:41:00 GMT

4.5 earthquake felt on board Vagabond, docked in Narsaq, 10 days after completing the installation of the 15 seismic stations of the Protero-Litho2 project!

Vagabond (Groenland2024)

Geology in Gardar, opus II

Earthquake South Greenland