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For ���������� Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science

Soft light slanted across the gray Norwegian sky, bouncing off the frigid water where sat in a research boat. She had just helped her team tag a whale and was scanning the waves for the next group. It was a rare reprieve in what otherwise tends to be a chaotic venture.

She lifted her camera, but not for data collection this time. The scene was simply too vivid not to capture.

“I was super surprised about catching the little whale in the background of it, framed in the platform,” Vogel recalls. “That was a very, very nice surprise. I’m not often using my camera to take pictures of people, but the lighting was so atmospheric, I thought it would be a good shot.”

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Emma Vogel, a 2016 ���������� Boulder graduate in ecology and evolutionary biology, is a postdoctoral researcher at The Arctic University of Norway.

The photo, showing a researcher poised to launch a tracking tag set against a backdrop of swarming seabirds, .

For Vogel, a 2016 University of Colorado Boulder graduate, the image is more than an award-winner. It’s a snapshot of her life spent tracking giants of the ocean through the shifting currents of science and sustainability.

A path north

Vogel’s journey to the coast of Northern Norway, firmly situated in the Arctic Circle, began in Washington, D.C., but when it was time to go to college, the mountains of Colorado called.

“I thought Colorado looked beautiful. And I kind of always knew I wanted to do science or ecology, so it seemed like a perfect place for that,” she says.

During her time at ���������� Boulder, Vogel studied ecology and evolutionary biology, exploring the impact of forest fires and regrowth. A semester abroad in Sweden opened her eyes to marine science.

“I got to take some more aquatic and ocean marine-based courses and I fell in love with the field.”

After graduation, Vogel spent two years working in animal welfare policy with the Humane Society of the United States. However, she felt drawn to do hands-on research.

That led her to Tromsø, Norway, where she earned her master’s and PhD and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Arctic University of Norway’s Arctic Sustainability Lab.

Fieldwork at the edge of the world

As one might imagine, life and research in the Arctic come with their own rhythms.

“Some of the unique, really wonderful things that maybe people wouldn't expect, is that it's such a diverse place, both the people and the ecosystems, the organisms that live here,” Vogel says. “We have a beautiful combination of mountains and ocean right in the same space.”

Fieldwork in this environment is both harsh and intimate. Vogel and her team spend weeks tracking and tagging humpback and killer whales in the fjords during the winter herring season. She says the process can be logistically easier than in other places because the whales stay close to the coast.

But the conditions are punishing.

“In the morning, we often need to shovel snow out of our boats before we can get started, and it’s cold enough where the seawater is freezing onto the boat. Temperatures are often well below zero while we’re out doing research.”

Luckily, Vogel has discovered something of a superpower.

“The thing that changed it for me was when I discovered battery-powered socks that you can put on a little cycle to heat up every 30 minutes,” she says with a grin. “They really make all the difference.”

Those socks come in handy during long days on the water when Vogel and her team are using air-powered tracking equipment to attach satellite transmitters to whales. The tags allow researchers to track their movements long after they disappear from the coast.

“Normally, once the whales get enough of the herring, we don’t know where they go. With the tags, we can see their movement patterns for a month to six months, depending on the species and tag,” she says.

From there, Vogel and her team can interpret the data to paint a clearer picture of what these oceanic giants do when they slip below the waves.

“We can figure out their behavior based on the data. If they’re slowing down and turning a lot in one area, we can say they’re possibly looking for food and foraging. If they’re traveling in a straight line really fast, then it’s kind of transiting behavior. For humpbacks, we’ve tracked them through a full migration. So, going down to the Caribbean and then back up to Norway and even up into the Barents Sea.

“These tags let us track them through the entire ocean and see things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which is, I think, really exciting.”

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Data-informed decisions

Part of Vogel’s work in the Arctic Sustainability Lab involves turning movement data into better marine policy.

“We are working to create ways to use tracking data to help spatial planners consider these migratory animals when designing local marine protected areas,” she says.

It’s a tricky challenge. Protected zones often prioritize stationary habitats for sea grasses and corals (and the animals that rely on them), not animals that travel hundreds or thousands of miles every year. Vogel and her team hope to change that by giving planners reliable data to inform their policy decisions.

But her work isn’t solely focused on marine life. She’s also part of a , which helps quantify the health and sustainability of Northern Norway’s seaside communities.

“We developed a website called the Coastal Barometer to offer different ways of looking at and considering sustainability. It lets people from different municipalities click on where they’re from and see where they’re performing well and where there needs to be improvement,” Vogel says.

The project includes metrics for biodiversity, water quality, carbon storage, tourism, economic resilience and even a unique measure called “sense of place” that considers how much people value their connection to the local land and sea.

The latter is more urgent than ever. While Vogel doesn’t want to attribute all changes in her community to climate change, she’s already seen worrying signs.

“This last summer and the summer before we had about a month of days that you were able to go hiking in shorts in the Arctic. That’s been rare since I came here in 2018. For now, they’re nice, but you don’t want it much warmer.”

Those summer days may be rare enough to feel like a novelty today. But for researchers like Vogel, they are a quiet warning that even in the planet’s most rugged corners, change is underway. Thanks to valuable data collected by humans who care, communities and conservationists can be equipped with tools to adapt to those changes.

Boulder foundation, global reach

Despite her current home being thousands of miles away, Vogel still sees her time at ���������� Boulder as a defining chapter.

“It really set me up so well, I think, to be an interdisciplinary researcher. Not only taking science courses, but also exploring literature, communication, human geography. I even , which was quite fun,” she recalls.

That foundation has served her well in a career that now sprawls across ecology, community engagement and policy innovation. For students hoping to follow in her footsteps, Vogel has one piece of advice: “Genuine curiosity.”

“You need to really want to understand and be inquisitive,” she says. “To understand for the sake of understanding—not just taking your courses. Asking questions and not taking things at surface value, just always wondering, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ can really get you far.”��

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