Fieldwork

Much of our research and service is based on observations collected in the field by ourselves or others or published in the scientific literature. This is so because thorough knowledge and understanding of the governing processes is paramount when seeking answers to scientific questions.

Experience

Our experience in the field is broad and comprehensive. It includes

• a wide range of vessels, from small rubber boats to ocean-going survey vessels,
• wild rivers, deep fjords, coastal zones and vast oceans,
• areas from the arctic to the tropics,
• simple setups (for example, hand-hauled CTD profiling) and complex systems, including a range of instruments (for example, ROVs or ROTVs).

We have carried out fieldwork in remote locations where tailor-made, flexible solutions and a fair amount of handicraft, mechanical as well as electronic, are required for a successful expedition. This reduces downtime and costs tremendously and increases the quality and the amount of the observations.

We are trained and certified according to STCW to man any vessel. This reduces the cost of chartering the vessel, increases safety and opens space for an additional scientist or surveyor.

Successful fieldwork

In order for fieldwork to be successful, the following points are of particular importance.

• Knowing your instruments and their capabilities and limitations
• Deploying optimally with respect to vessel, waves, flow conditions and the task at hand
• Collecting and saving all data of relevance

These points are crucial to data quality and the possibility of utilizing the data fully when they are analyzed subsequently, including determining the uncertainty of the measurements.

When things go wrong

A terrifying example of how wrong things can go is this: the Danish Galathea III Expedition travelled around the world with inappropriate settings of its two ADCPs, causing some 90% of all the flow velocity data to be useless.