Hello, I’m Yuping Guo, a PhD student from Zhejiang University now studying at GEOMAR. I participated in the GEOTRACES Pacific Ocean cruise last year, and I am now excited to join Polar Beast as my first Artctic research cruise. On this cruise we will go into 5 Arctic fjords and see a lots of glaciers and icebergs, making it an amazing experience for me.

On the ship, I am responsible for helping to collect trace metal clean samples in the bubble (clean lab) and analyzing aluminum samples at sea using the Carey Eclipse fluorometer. My research focuses on the distribution of aluminum in East Greenland. I hope we will get valuable data and find some interesting discoveries. The daily work is both challenging and rewarding, as I work with many scientists from various countries and majors. It let me learn different research methods and procedures, greatly enriching my knowledge and skills.

Why are we interested in aluminum? Aluminum is widely used as a tracer of dust deposition in the ocean, we think it might also be a useful tracer of some particle sources around Greenland from runoff and subglacial discharge, so we want to test this in a variety of environments.

One of my greatest moments of happiness on this cruise so far is capturing the beauty of the glaciers and sunsets every day. These sights also provide a wonderful position to the scientific research. I am eagerly looking forward to both the scientific work and views that await us as we proceed further north.