Collecting Data at the Edge of the Tunabreen Glacier

Fulmars rest in the centre of this image taken in Tempelfjorden, Svalbard. Behind them lies the vast Tunabreen glacier, which stretches about 23 kilometres further north and divides Sabine Land from Bünsow Land. Each day huge pieces of ice calved into the fjord from the face of the glacier, often making it difficult to navigate our small boat back to base camp as icebergs filled the water.

I took this photo as the team was returning from collecting water samples from the outflow of the Von Postbreen glacier, several kilometres to the right. I loved this view and saw it almost daily as we returned to gather as much data as we could during the expedition as part of a nitrogen cycling project. It felt like looking back to a time long before human civilisation.

The scale of the glacier and the surrounding landscape is hard to convey without standing there, but it is immense and fills your imagination in a unique and deeply expansive way." David Pidgeon, July 2025.