ICE CALVING CASE STUDY
ARCTIC WARNING The breaking up of glaciers is a sign of real global warming. Although we have seen lots of images of it happening, the sound has not been the highest priority – until now
Kulusuk Island off the south-eastern coast. With more sled dogs than people, the island is already remote, but getting deeper into the Arctic gave Beverly access to glaciers so huge they even have names, such as Knud Rasmussen and Karale. “We would camp by the glaciers, then go back to Kulusuk to regroup for a few days, charge batteries and then go out for another stretch,” explains Beverly. “The recording conditions were nearly perfect as the temperatures were fairly mild at around 5-6°C. And with a sun that never sets in July, it was handy to be able to record at any time of the day. Sometimes nothing happened for 12 hours, other times there was a flurry of activity over a one-hour timespan, so it was very important to get the audio right every time the calving activity took place.” The size and geography of each glacier gives each one a unique acoustic footprint and its own distinct sonic personality.
“Knud had thunderous, gunshot-like cracks as pieces broke from the top and fell below”
were placed on either side of the calving face to capture every aspect of what was happening with the glacier. Capturing the sound “I have some small lavalier mics that I run off my handheld recorders, and those use plug-in power of about five volts and can run continuously for over five days. Then I have my main Sennheiser double mid-side rig, which runs on 48v phantom power. The three mics that I use – a pair of Sennheiser MKH 8040s and an MKH 30-P48 – can run for roughly 18 hours on one battery. Generally, we would camp somewhere near one of the glaciers, so I’d have the Sennheiser rig near the
Karale was about 1.5km wide featuring a 15m- tall face, while Knud was 2km wide and twice as tall. The size of the mountainous fjord also made a difference to the calving sounds, so the acoustics are different for each glacier. Beverly explains “Karale had long roaring events as huge pieces broke loose and rolled. Knud had thunderous, gunshot-like cracks as pieces broke from the top and fell to dynamite in the water below.” Working on multiple glaciers, each with an unpredictable lifespan, he had to be prepared. Microphones would run continuously and between five and eight audio recording rigs were set up, running 24 hours a day for 14 days. Microphones
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