Koval’skifjellet

Koval’skifjella (79.065°N x 17.279°E) is a mountain located in South East Svalbard. Koval’skifjella is home to one of the largest seabird colonies on Svalbard with >40,000 individual Brünnich’s guillemots and approximately 5000 pairs of black-legged kittiwakes. Northern fulmars and glaucous gulls are also common breeders there.

Most of the Brünnich’s guillemots on Svalbard breed in the South-East part of the archipelago but until now, very little data were available from this region. Koval’skifjella then became a SEATRACK location in 2021 with thirty GLS loggers being deployed on Brünnich’s guillemots. Koval’skifjella can only be accessed by helicopter (or after a few days of sailboat) and is not visited every year. After logger deployment in 2021, the colony was visited again in 2024 and some loggers were retrieved, provided the first tracking data from this part of Svalbard.