Gulls scream overhead as a scientist battles raging waves from a boat in a northern Norwegian fjord, with his course aided only by the yellow glow of a nearby fishing trawler. This dawn shot of biologist Audun Rikardsen, taken by his PhD student Emma Vogel in November 2020, is this year’s overall Scientist at Work photo competition winner.
Vogel is an animal movement researcher and spatial ecologist who completed her PhD at the University of Tromsø — The Arctic University of Norway — in 2023. She continues to collaborate with Rikardsen there as a postdoctoral researcher. For her, this photograph represents a rare peaceful moment in an otherwise chaotic morning.
“It feels quite calm,” she says of the photo. “I’m used to so much going on during fieldwork. It seems very thoughtful, and breathing, and just taking a moment.”
Their fieldwork involved tailing fishing vessels in the fjords of northern Norway, where there is an abundance of herring. These fish attract large numbers of killer whales (Orcinus orca) and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Vogel and Rikardsen track the movements of whales with satellite tags, which are deployed using the wide-barrelled air gun Rikardsen is holding in the photo.
These tags collect data on whale location and surfacing patterns; some also collect diving behaviour, including dive duration and maximum depth. Often the researchers also conduct a biopsy, extracting tissue samples that can be used to monitor whale health.
This activity keeps the scientists close to their targets. “You could smell their breath,” says Vogel. “And you could hear them before you can see them, which is always quite incredible.”
Careful scrutiny of Vogel’s photo reveals a killer whale surfacing in the background of the image, framed by the metal rail behind Rikardsen — something that had eluded the judges when they first checked the submission. “I was happy to get that,” says Vogel. “I mean, it’s such a spectacular place to do fieldwork.”
All photos by Emma Vogel
Here are the rest of the winning images from the competition.
