Holiday Assistant

Photo: Peter Leopold

UNIS (University Centre on Svalbard) is, of course like almost everything up here, one of the worlds northernmost places to get university level education. It’s not just an university. It is an institution, which tends to change lives. It gives people everything they need: cool (also literally) things to do, good friends, home and an understanding of the beauty which lies under the barren landscape of Arctic. The institution and the people there has given me so much, that I have already forgotten more than a lot they have given to me. However, I am grateful.

Photo: Peter Leopold

Good thing about UNIS is that it doesn’t stop. People tend to come back. After you have got your education, they need you to do jobs, which are not exactly tricky, but need some knowledge about the area and about the rules when working in the Arctic. One this kind of jobs is the holiday assistant job at UNIS Logistics Department. Days are mostly spent on the field driving with a PolarCirkel (the manufacturer, photo above) speedboat people and equipment to various destinations around Isfjorden. If there is the job that is supposed to be the funniest in the world, it must be this one. Sun-glasses, motorboat with a big engine, rough seas and pretty girls looking like seals in their orange survival suits. Just like the scientists in the Hollywood movies. Bitty that it lasts only few weeks a year.

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Let ’em fly

Young Arctic tern trying its wings on Axeløya, Bellsund

The Arctic summer is a short event. From a bird-point-of-view this means that eggs are laid early June and chicks hatch in the both sides of the beginning of July. In the beginning of August most chicks have already fledged. New life develops from an egg into a self-sustaining creature during the three months of the summer on Svalbard. Those who did not manage to keep in the pace, died or will die as the autumn turns to winter. The speed the life takes, makes the summer to feel even shorter. Soon the sun goes down again and the summer is gone.

When chicks are ready to take off, adults will follow. In alcids juveniles tend to follow their fathers off to the sea to learn important hunting skills, while kittiwake chicks find themselves alone to form groups with other youngsters. Together they have to learn the rules needed to survive in the world, which gets tougher day by day as the autumn develops.

After the seabirds have left their colonies, seabird researchers have very few reasons to stay. Field season with birds has came to the end. For those in the high buildings of the city of Tromsø this means a work load with data in order to produce publications. For me it means a new kind of field work. Driving around to study chicks becomes to drive around chicks that are studying.

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Wildlife of Svalbard

I opened a new album to Google Picasa. Wildlife of Svalbard is a collection of 50 shots. The plan is to keep updating the album by adding new photos and removing some old ones from time to time just to keep it fresh. All published wildlife photos from the archipelago can still be found from Birds of Svalbard and Mammals of Svalbard -albums.

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There where the little bird flies

Little auk is the most abundant bird species on Svalbard. As many other sea bird species, little auks are long living and can sometimes reach the age of 30. A little auk pair lays an egg every year, but success in breeding (i.e. that the egg develops to an adult) is a rare occasion. They eat small nutritious zooplankton, which has a high fat content due to the extreme seasonality in the Arctic. While feeding their chicks little auks are doing two kinds of hunting trips: short and long ones. Short trips last only for some hours and are done to the waters close to their colonies. During these trips birds are collecting food for their chicks. Whereas long trips are done when a parent's energy reserves are getting so depleted that it can not continue chick rearing without a break. These trips can last for days. Typically another one of the parents heads for a long trip, while the other one is carrying food for their chick. Naturally the more long trips adults are completing and the longer the trips last, the worse is the breeding success and, eventually, the year.

Little auks are flying speeds about 40-50 km/h. While heading out for a long trip, they rest about half of the time and rest on the water the second half. One flight to feeding waters can take as long as ten hours. It is easy to calculate that during these trips the birds could fly very far from their colonies. Destinations for long trips probably vary from a year to year and are still largely a mystery for the people working with little auks.

One of this field season's goals was to look more deep into this mystery. We tried to deploy mini-GPS loggers on the birds to see, where they were flying, but the trial fell into technical problems. Loggers weren't technically strong enough take the Arctic challenges. Batteries did not work in cold water. A couple of weeks ago we went for a cruise trying to follow the birds flying out from their colonies. Huge densities of birds at the Ice-edge, just west from the legendary Whales bay confirmed the educated guess. These little birds are flying hundreds of kilometers only to find the fat plankton living at the edge of the Arctic sea ice zone.

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