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NO PLACE FOR A MAN
Documenting Greenpeace's campaign to protect the Barents Sea from Arctic oil expansion
NO PLACE FOR A MAN
Documenting Greenpeace's campaign to protect the Barents Sea from Arctic oil expansion
Commissioned work with Greenpeace aboard the icebreaker Arctic Sunrise on an expedition to the Barents Sea. The mission: to document and protest Norway's expansion of offshore drilling into the pristine Arctic waters near Bear Island (Bjørnøya).
Bear Island, a remote nature reserve in the Barents Sea, hosts one of the largest seabird colonies north of the Arctic Circle. Each year, millions of migratory birds return to nest on its southern cliffs. The island's extreme climate—ice-covered for most of the year—makes it a critical but fragile ecosystem. An oil spill in these conditions would be catastrophic and nearly impossible to remediate, threatening not only the bird populations but the entire Arctic food chain.
Despite its name, Bjørnøya has not recorded a polar bear sighting in several years. The station logbook, maintained by the island's nine Norwegian scientists and meteorologists, once documented regular bear arrivals from Svalbard via pack ice. Those pages now remain blank. Receding sea ice, a consequence of Arctic warming, no longer extends far enough south to serve as a corridor for bears.
While the bears may be gone, the birds remain. The cliffs of Bjørnøya continue to support one of the northern hemisphere's most significant seabird breeding grounds—a vital link in the Arctic ecosystem that oil development threatens to disrupt.
