Bjornoya

Bjørnøya is the southernmost island of the Svalbard archipelago. The island which has an area of 178 km² is located in the western part of the Barents Sea, approximately halfway between Spitsbergen and the North Cape.

Seabirds have been monitored on Bjørnøya since 1986. It supports breeding populations of Northern fulmars (50,000–60,000 pairs), Glaucous gulls (2000 pairs), Black-legged kittiwakes (100,000 pairs), Little auks (10,000–100,000 pairs), Common guillemots (80,000 pairs), Brünnich’s guillemots (130,000 pairs) and Black guillemots (1000 pairs). The island became a nature reserve in 2003, and has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International.

Bjørnøya has been a SEATRACK locality since 2013, although several GLS studies have been carried out there earlier. Common guillemots and Brünnich’s guillemots have been instrumented there since 2007, great skuas since 2008, black-legged kittiwakes and little auks since 2009 and glaucous gulls since 2010.