
Where Beavers Gather
By Kip Carlson
By Alex Rivest, Photographer
Professor Lorenzo Ciannelli’s father was a fisherman. Growing up in Italy, Ciannelli would accompany his dad and wonder about the lives of the fish they pulled on board: What kind of habitat did they live in? What did they eat? Why did he and his father sometimes catch a mountain of fish and sometimes none at all? As an oceanographer in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, he asks the same questions. His current project seeks to learn about fish and other animals in understudied fjords in Greenland, where Arctic settlements depend on fishing for their livelihoods, but warming seas are bringing change. In 2023, he and graduate student Haley Carlton traveled with a team to Sermilik Fjord in southeast Greenland, an area dominated by a marine- terminating glacier and the fresh, cold water it delivers to the fjord and the salty ocean beyond. Using bongo nets and trawls, they plied the waters, counting and measuring the species they caught. So far, they’ve been surprised by the differences between populations found in water influenced by fresh meltwater versus the rich oceanic waters near the continental shelf. Next summer, the team travels to Greenland’s Inglefield Fjord to compare results.
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