Farthest North The End of Ice

The journey begins on the Arctic coast of Alaska where retreating sea ice has caused severe coastal erosion to occur. The villages of Shismaref, Kivalina, and Wales are eroding away. The retreat of the pack ice has serious consequences on the entire Arctic ecosystem: walrus, ringed seals, beluga whales, seabirds, and fish are impacted. Open water means more stormy seas, and these erode even more ice and make subsistence hunting for all coastal peoples impossible.

Open water anywhere in the Arctic means there is no albedo effect: solar heat is no longer radiated back into space. The seas warm up. Marine ecosystems are changed. Ice acts like the lid on a pot: it keeps the storm-tormented seas contained. Without ice, the coasts are battered by wind waves and unseasonable storms. The entire villages of Shismaref and Kivalina are being moved.

Accompanied by a renowned Alaskan artist, Joe Sennungetuk, a native of Wales, Alaska, we will stay in his home village, then travel to nearby communities to see and hear how the climate crisis is effecting their subsistence lives and rich cultural traditions. 

Upcoming. We will go on a month long walrus hunting trip with four of Greenland’s best hunters with 57 dogs pulling four freight sleds across dangerous ice between Etah and Moriusak, on the North-west coast of Greenland.

Upcoming. Accompanied by Russian ethnographer Andrei Volkov, we travel on foot with the Nenet people and their reindeer in capricious spring weather from the Arkhangels region on the Kanin Peninsula all the way to the White Sea. 

Upcoming. Traveling by private fixed wing aircraft designed for aerial photography, we will fly from Barrow, Alaska all the way across the polar north, following the northwest passage which was, in fact, the migration route for Inuit hunters as they moved from Siberia to Greenland thousands of years ago.

Not only will we photograph the changing ice from the air, but also, we will make stops at every village between Barrow and Pond Inlet, Nunavut and hear the stories of how their traditional life was disrupted by the Canadian government, and the ways in which spiritual, social, and hunting ways have been kept alive.

In Igloolik, on Baffin Island, the site of the only indigenous Arctic film company, home of the producers of “The Fast Runner.” Here we will visit traditional hunters, village elders, and young filmmakers working to hold onto their traditions using a modern medium.  

Upcoming. Chukotka. North-Eastern Siberia. Traveling again with Andrei Volkov, we will live with coastal marine mammal hunters near Provideniya and Lavrenty, then travel inland and to stay with reindeer herders.

The indigenous people of Siberia were devastated first by Stalin, then by the fall of communist regime and the reversion to capitalism. Traditions have been squelched, and poverty is rampant. But they are struggling to maintain their identity and fighting for their indigenous rights. We will follow one hunter and his family and go to the heart of their struggle to maintain the old and live with the new, and for, simply, survival.

Upcoming. The sun goes down for the last time for four months on October 24th at Latitude 79 N. We will travel with subsistence hunters by dogsled on the ice as they look for walrus. Will ice still be thick enough to travel on when the sun returns in February? Will they have enough food for both dogs and families?

As the hunters stop their sleds and stand facing the disappearing sun, we will ask what they will do when the ice is gone, when the polar bear, walrus, and ringed seal become extinct, and their 5000 year-old hunting traditions come to an end. They’ll climb back on their sleds and head for town. There will be the sound of dogs trotting, of ice breaking, of bearded seals singing as the screen goes black.

(Photographer: David McLain/Aurora Photos)
Giant icebergs drift in open water, this water, which is frozen most of the year, has been slower to freeze and earlier to thaw as a result of global warming.