The Great White Silence
How early polar research in Antarctica, documented in a silent film by Herbert Ponting, continues to add to the conversation about climate change today.
View from the volcanic beach at Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2014
In 2014 my husband and I went on a trip to Iceland. We were excited to have some time to ourselves while our two children aged 9 and 7 at the time, spent the weekend with family. We were also excited to visit this small country that sits right at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Where in summer daylight stretches on into the night and if you're lucky the Aurora Borealis ignites the sky with its shimmering waves of spectral light.
This is a volcanic landscape. Hot steam puffs and billows out from vents in the ground. Gigantic waterfalls thunder down cracks between tectonic plates and stocky Icelandic ponies stand quietly, bracing themselves against the bitter wind that whips up from the North Atlantic Ocean and races across the land.
The cold, the wind, and the barren volcanic landscape are magnificent. Squinting through the sun and hot steam I'm reminded of early Polar Exploration photography. I see people standing on the decks of ships diminished by the size of icebergs hundreds of metres high, by huge sweeping glaciers which edge the sea or simply by the enormous expanse of sea and ice.
And then there is Antarctica, at the opposite end of the world from Iceland, at the "uttermost end of the Earth" - Herbert Ponting.
Herbert G Ponting
Herbert G Ponting was an experienced travel photographer who in 1910 accompanied the British Antarctic Expedition led by Captain Robert Scott. Ponting was to document through moving and still imagery the team performing scientific and geographical research in Antarctica. The end of the expedition would result in a small breakaway team that would make their way on foot to the very bottom of the world. They were hoping to be the first humans to plant their country's flag at the South Pole.
In February 1912 Ponting returned to London just as Scott and his party set off on their doomed journey to the South Pole.
Ponting used pieces of his Antarctic footage for lectures he gave in subsequent years but he didn't release a fully realised film until 1924. Sadly the response to the film was muted. Scott and his colleagues had long since died in the tiny tent Ponting had filmed all those years ago and photographic technology had marched on. The polar adventure had all but faded into myth.
The Great White Silence - a Reconstruction
In the 1940s the British Film Institute acquired the original negative film footage. It wasn't for many more years to come that The Great White Silence was reconstructed using Ponting's early notes indicating the colour tinting and editing that he had used back in the 1920s.
I haven't seen the whole film, only glimpses and snippets on YouTube. The first thing that makes it so striking is the incredible use of colour. It is, compellingly beautiful. In a cyan blue glow, the bow of a ship carves its way through the pack ice; in a shadowy yellow haze penguins race after a bucket of fish; a man plays with a cat, a cat! In Antarctica! Icebergs loom and waves crash silently at their base. The BFI reconstruction has the new addition of a soundtrack, a hauntingly beautiful soundscape composed by Simon Fisher Turner.
Antarctica and Climate Change
I wonder, 9 years after our trip to Iceland and over a century after Ponting's film, how the wildlife and environment of Antarctica are faring.
I find information.
While the early polar explorers shared a common goal - to map Antarctica's coastline and be the first to the South Pole - The British Antarctic Expedition had further objectives, scientific and geographical readings, observations and experiments. The Terra Nova returned to England with over 2100 plant, animal and fossil specimens, 400 of which were new to science at the time.
Incredibly, the meteorological data collected by these early polar scientists formed the longest unbroken weather record in the early 20th century. This data still provides contemporary scientists with baselines for current assessments of climate change.
Antarctica is one of the coldest, driest, and windiest places on earth. Its expanse is 58 times the size of the UK. It is the only continent without a native population of humans.
In 1985 scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) first discovered the hole in the ozone layer.
In The Great White Silence there are so many penguins! It's hard to believe that at the time people had never seen penguins. Watching them run and slip and slide across the ice must have been a delight to the early explorers. Sadly penguins are in decline in part because of humans fishing the seas for the very food penguins rely on.
Over the past 30 years, the amount of glacial ice melt from Thwaites Glacier has nearly doubled adding a 4% rise in world sea levels. A huge rise with damaging consequences. Add to this, vast quantities of plastic waste and industrial fishing on an unsustainable scale, and the damage to wildlife and the planet is life-changing.
What Can We Do?
We hear this often; climate change, environmental damage, and the slow extinction of animals, fish and birds. Amongst the apocolyptic reports, it can be hard to find any positive news. The planet is doomed. We are doomed. I wonder though. If this is the only story we tell ourselves we will do nothing to change things. We will think there is nothing we can do.
Like a butterfly flapping its wings, each and every tiny change creates bigger changes along the way. For example, each and every electric car bought instead of a petrol one decreases the carbon levels in the atmosphere. Every time you reuse a bag you say no to one more piece of plastic being added to non-biodegradable waste.
We need to tell ourselves a different story, one that says it’s not too late. With some effort, with some change of habit, with more knowledge, with a better story, we can make a serious healthful change to our beautiful planet.
