From the archive – The sound of icebergs melting: my journey into the Antarctic

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors This week, from 2020: Not long after Antarctica recorded some its highest-ever temperatures, I joined a group of scientists studying how human activity is transforming the continent. It wasn’t what we saw that was most astonishing – but what we heard. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Guardian.
0:30.0	The Guardian Archive Long Read.
1:00.0	Hello, my name is Jonathan Watts.
1:02.0	I'm global environment writer for the Guardian.
1:04.0	And I'm the author of an article titled, The Sound of icebergs melting, which is based
1:11.6	on my trip to the Antarctic in 2020.
1:16.7	The Antarctic is the world's last truly great wilderness.
1:21.7	I've written that many times about the ice in the Antarctic.
1:27.3	So when I had the chance to join a research expedition that was being organised by Greenpeace
1:34.4	on the Arctic Sunrise and the Esperanza, their two main ships, I jumped at the opportunity.
1:40.4	I just really wanted to see it.
1:42.5	I wanted to see the wildlife there.
1:44.2	I wanted to know more about the science of what was happening there and see it for my
1:49.2	own eyes.
1:51.6	The Antarctic is something of a shock to the senses, not just because it's cold, but because
1:58.9	there are no smells at all.
2:01.9	That one really sticks with me because you just get used to having a lot of olifactory
2:07.7	sensations everywhere else, but here that was different.
2:11.6	I've never seen such a place where wildlife is truly dominant still.
2:17.0	That's not even the case in many wildlife parks in Africa and things like that.
2:21.4	There it really is the case.
2:24.3	It's also different because in many places, particularly places like the Amazon, when we
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