NFB - Arctic Mission - Documentaries

INTERVIEW WITH CAROLINE UNDERWOOD

Photo - Caroline Underwood Interviewer: Can you describe the film to us as you see it now?

Underwood: My film is a journey across the Arctic that reveals the subtilties of the seasons and the incredible diversity of wildlife that lives there. However, it is also a journey across the Arctic seen through the lens of climate change. From the beginning of this project I was inspired by the Inuit way of dividing the year into eight seasons (in some communities it is six seasons) and I wanted my film to reflect, as much as possible, their sensitivity to a landscape that we in the south all to often see as being uniformly cold, windy and white. “The Lords of the Arctic” begins when the sun returns and ends as the “great darkness returns” – we travel through all the seasons and come full circle. In between are all the animals – the polar bears, whales, caribou and other species that we associate with the Arctic. Only now we see them from a different perspective, this time we see them in the context of their changing world, a world that is increasingly impacted by climate change.

Interviewer: What is shown in each season?

Underwood: The film starts in the northeastern Arctic, at the floe edge near Pond Inlet. This is a very beautiful place surounded by the mountains of Baffin and Bylot Island. In February the sun is really low and at first glace there's little to see - there's still lots of ice and the sea is frozen. Later as the sun rises higher you sense “the promise of spring” and eventually the summer to come. In the Arctic, it's the sea, the marine ecosystem, that gives life. Life returns first to the floe edge - the place where ice and sea meet. It is a constantly changing environment. In the late spring productivity is very high because there is lots to eat.

When the pack ice begins to break-up light can penetrate the water, stimulating photosythesis and a huge plankton to bloom. The plankton are eaten by zooplankton. These plants and animals are the foundation of the marine ecosystem. They feed huge numbers of arctic and polar cod that in turn feed the ringed (and other species) of seals. As the floe edge expands and the leads open up the whales return: narwhals to feed on the cod and bowhead whales that ‘graze ‘ the plankton blooms. Polar bears eat the seals and migrating birds return to raise their young. This moment, this incredible bloom, turns the edge of the ice into an oasis - it's where all the animals come. It was a key moment for us. Here we can see the Arctic as it has been since the last glaciation. For us, it's an extreme climate to work in, but for most of the animals like the bowhead whales there is little change in the water temperature year round so their world is very consistent. I came here to show the Arctic as it should be - a place where climate change has had little impact.

Interviewer: It's also an illustration of the food chain.

Underwood: Yes, absolutely. The food chain or food web in the Arctic is relatively simple compared to temperate or tropical ecosystems.

Interviewer: It helps us to understand the cycle of life in the Arctic.

Underwood: Yes. It's not all that complex in the Arctic; you don't find as many trophic levels as in the ecosystems farther south. But everything is connected, one change can very quickly lead to another. And the problem, of course, is that if you make a change to a single link in the chain, you can have big problems. Many of the animals that live here are unique – you don’t find them elsewhere. If they loose their home and their way of life because of climate change they won’t have anywhere to go.
After the floe edge we head south to Hudson Bay. Normally in late spring, early summer (in July) there should still be ice in the northern Hudson Bay region. But for the past 20 years or so, the ice has been going out earlier, about 2 weeks earlier and also forming later in the fall. This is one of the places that scientists have identified as a ‘hot spot’ and here we can already see the effects of global warming on wildlife.

Interviewer: For what kind of animals?

Underwood: Seals and polar bears are the best known examples. Seals need an ice platform to raise their young - it's where they're born and where they make their lairs for their pups. And because the seals are there, the polar bears go there too, to eat. This is where polars bears obtain most of their food for the year (the rest of the year they live off their fat reserves). Unfortunately for them they can only hunt on the ice - they can’t hunt seals in water. So if there's no ice platform to hunt from they don’t eat. But less well known are the other problems; like their energy budget. Polar bears prefer to travel on ice, but if the winds or currents change, they’ll use more energy. This can have a devastating effect on a females ability to conceive or sucesfully raise her cubs. Polar bears and seals are the cases that are most familiar to people, but there are others.

Interviewer: What are the other species that are affected?

Underwood: Tony Gaston, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, has done some excellent research on a murre colony on Coats Island. These are seabirds that feed on fish – mostly young Arctic cod. But with the warming trend, Tony Gaston has founded that now they are bringing back different fish species. Now they are bringing species that are common to more southern ecosystems. This means that the ocean has already started to change, which raises questions about the disruption of natural cycles. Southern species of fish are moving north. Birds, fish and all the other animal species, have spent thousands, of years adapting to living together and now all that is changing, and it is changing very quicky and there are consequences. What Tony Gaston observed is that the murre chicks weigh less than they used to. The adults are having a hard time in summer when it's really hot. They get dehydrated as they try to protect their chicks from the sun and some even die of heat stroke.

Hudson Bay is of the hot spots of climate change in the Arctic, the Beaufort Sea is another. This was an important subject for the film because in these places you can really experience the changes that affect the animals directly. You can see an ecosystem that's beginning to fall apart and change into something different. We don't know what's going to happen, but it's certain that life will become more difficult for the bears and other Arctic species in these more southern parts of their range.

Interviewer: What other animals do you look at - caribou?

Underwood: We see how animals like caribou - the hundreds of thousands of caribou that live all over the continent, from East to West - depend on the tundra or barrens for their survival. There are no trees and living conditions are quite harsh, but they are well adapted to live in that landscape.However, there is evidence that the treeline is moving north and that species of shrubs are changing. Their arrival in the spring is timed so that they can take advatage of the plants when they are the most nutritious. If the peak moment changes as a result of warming – it will start earlier - the caribou will arrive after the nutritional peak and this will have an impact on their ability to get enough nutrients for themselves and their calves. Warming also affects the insects perhaps there will be more of them and insect harrasment will be even more of problem for the caribou.

So we're looking at things that seem small and inconsequential, but they can have a great impact on animals like caribou. One of my favourite quotes from the film is from Anne Gunn, a biologist who specializes in caribou. She says: "caribou are the heartbeat of the tundra” and that’s because everything from mosqitoes to grizzly bears depend on them. There is no place on earth where you can see the spectacle of a herd of thousands of caribou. However, just because there are so many of them we cannot take their future for granted.

Interviewer: What about other parasites?

Underwood: There is evidence that warming will favour some parasites – their chances of surviving the winter will increase, but it will be at the expense of their hosts. There is some evidence that this is already happening with a muskox lungworm. The work of Dr. Susan Kutz suggests that parasites are adapting to the changing conditions faster than their hosts.

Interviewer: How else does climate change affect caribou?

Underwood: There's a caribou herd on Victoria Island – the Dolphin and Union herd and it migrates across the ice every fall between the island and the mainland. But for the past few years the time of freeze-up has changed. Now Coronation Gulf freezes later than it used to. The caribou herd congregates on the southern shore of Victoria Island waiting for the ice to form. They arrive at their usual time and end up eating everything. As there is not enough food they start to get imatient and want to leave; then they venture out onto the ice before it is thick enough or has frozen all the way across and they fall through. Some years a lot of them die. If the warming continues, the caribou will be faced with an enormous problem, they can't spend the winter on Victoria Island. They must cross to get to their wintering grounds.

Interviewer: What would you like audiences to learn from your film?

Underwood: I think the message is very simple and it is one that you experience on many different levels as you watch the film. There is the plight of an individual animaI and the new world it is experiencing. There is also the overwhelming evidence for the magnitude of the change in different Arctic ecosystems due to global warming. I hope that the program will inspire people to act before it is to late. The problem is that the elements that make the Arctic unique are changing and the unique wildlife could vanish. We must all think about that and take remedial action as quickly as possible if we want to limit the damage. People often ask me if I am optimistic or pessimistic about the Arctic’s future. I’d say I’m hopeful. I hope that we're still at a point where it's possible to turn things around. I wanted the film to show the interconnectedness of all the elements of life - both under the water and on land - so we see what links polar bears to birds, so our viewers can grasp the scope of the problem. I would like people to feel concerned and motivated to act. There are things that we can all do. I sincerely believe that there is hope for this amazing place if we act now. Each one of us must understand that we have to take action, and it has to be now!

Interviewer: During the shooting, were there things that were memorable or surprising for you and the crew?

Underwood: Oh, yes! There were all kinds of surprises - in almost every place we went. For me, they came from the largest and the smallest cratures. The largest were the bowhead whales. We were shooting near Igloolik, at the northern end of Fox Basin. We were working at the floe edge and it was an incredible day to shoot because for once there was no wind and it was sunny. Behind us was a great expanse of ice covered with huge turquoise puddles of melt water and in front of us was open water as far as the eye could see. We were getting impatient because by midafternoon we hadn’t seen very many whales. In the end between 3:00 in the afternoon and 9:00 in the evening, my crew and I saw at least 50 bowhead whales swim by us. These huge animals were surfacing right next to us - it was incredible. With all the wildlife filming I've done in the past 20 years I've seen quite a few wildlife spectacles, but that was really something special – it was very primordial. Especially when you know that there are only about 350 bowhead whales in the Eastern population.

Interviewer: Were you able to shoot that?

Underwood: Yes, we shot for six hours until we had to stop because of the changing tide. The whales came past us one at a time, in groups and 4 or 5 and they would sometimes ‘play’ right in front of us. Cameraman Marc Gadoury had to be careful that they didn’t splash water on the lens! Thanks to Mario Cyr, our underwater cameraman, we even got some great underwater shots. We all felt we were witnessing something special. They are such beautiful animals. At the opposite end of the scale there were the plankton.

Interviewer: They're visible?

Underwood: Yes, we could see some of them. Some are very small they're just little spots, but others are a centimetre or two long, like the copepods and the amphipods. There is very little visibility underwater because there are so many plankton. This makes underwater camerwork very difficult.There are some called Arctic angels or butterflies that are really delicate and beautiful. They are transparent and ‘fly’ through the water using their ‘wings’. And there are others called comb jellies that glittered with phosphorescence as they drifted towards the surface. When you see the clouds of plankton and the giant bowhead whales you experience a part of the incredible productivity of the Arctic.

Even though I have been to the Arctic before for other projects I had never realized or experienced just how much life there is - because so much of it is hidden and seasonal. Once you're there, you can really begin to understand the impact that even small changes in the climate will have and what impact changing the seasons will have. Life there and the places it thrives in are ephemeral; they are oasis that last a short while, then they are gone. Some ‘oasis’ are predictable and the birds and animals rely on them to be there when they return. On land the caribou herds rival the wildlife spectacles that we usually associate with Africa. This documentary is a celebration and an appeal for this amazing place.