“Our goal was not to discover a new island,” Danish explorer Morten Rasch told Reuters news agency. “We just went there to collect samples.”
At first, scientists believed that they had reached Oodaaq Island – an island that was discovered in 1978. Later, checking the exact location, they realized that, after all, they were on another island, 780 meters away, in the northwest direction.
Swiss entrepreneur Christian Lister, founder of the Leicester Foundation, which funded the expedition, added: “It’s a bit like explorers in the past, who thought they had come to a certain place but eventually found a completely different place.”
The small island, about 30 meters in diameter, consists of mud from the seabed, as well as soil and rocks left by the movement of glaciers. Although it has been subject to ice sheet drift, scientists say the island’s appearance is not a direct result of global warming, which has reduced Greenland’s ice sheet.
For the area to be considered part of Greenland, the Danish government still needs to be recognized, which can be done if the island remains visible even at high tide. “They meet island standards,” said Rene Forsberg, professor and chair of the Geodynamics Department at Denmark’s National Space Institute, while warning that “these little islands come and go.”
