Photojournalism nominee

Elephant Island is home to one of the world’s largest Chinstrap Penguin populations. It's an ice-covered, mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean. Due to its remote location and challenging conditions, the last ornithologically survey of the chinstrap penguins of Elephant Island was done in 1971, by a British Joint Services expedition identifying 123,000 nests. To understand how penguin populations are faring, a new survey was organised in January 2020 by researchers from Stony Brook University, Northeastern University and Greenpeace to study the impact of climate change on fragile chinstrap penguin colonies on Elephant Island in Antarctica. The census finds the number of chinstrap penguins on Elephant Island has dropped almost 60% since the last survey for almost 50 years ago. Penguins main source of food is krill and the warming waters have reduced the sea ice and the phytoplankton that krill depend upon.

Christian Åslund is an award winning Swedish photographer, based in Stockholm. Christian has a background as a photojournalist working for newspapers, magazines and NGO's, documenting armed conflicts, environmental and social issues. He also shoots commercial and editorial photography