Season 1 “New Ice”
In October, seawater freezes and new sea ice starts to form in the Arctic. Chunks of polar pack ice that have floated all summer start to push southward. The new ice is called nilas. It is thin, making a crunchy, flaky sound.
Bowhead whales are leaving for the year.
In November, thick sheets of nilas form interlocking fingers that raft together, becoming larger interlocking fingers, making horizontal transverse motions.
The atmosphere brushes and pushes across thousands of square kilometers of ice.
We hear the complexity of the forces that, in total, results in what we see as an ice-covered ocean.
Ice interlocking fingers consolidate into large pieces of ice, called floes, that can each span tens of kilometers. All the floes pack together tighter and tighter as the sea ice thickens.
We end inside of the ice with the sound of pressure—enormous pressure.
Season 2 “Darkness”
No daylight, total darkness. The sun charts its daily circle out of sight, well below the horizon.
Sea ice covers most of the region at this time. This is the early consolidation of sea ice which is at its coldest and brightest.
As the temperature of water and air changes, ice expands and contracts, creating thermal cracking.
Ice is battered by the harsh atmosphere—it is jumbled, broken, and crunched.
This is the sound of the Arctic Ocean in its natural state: the empty space is not empty at all.
Season 3 “Sunrise”
Deep winter, wind, snow, raging storms.
The air is so cold, it steams like a boiling pot. Cracks in the ice expose the nearly frozen water below.
As light starts to return in mid-March, the air gets colder. This is the coldest season, when the ice becomes about 12 feet thick, creating tremendous pressure.
The door for migrating marine animals—the 60,000 belugas and the 13,000 bowhead whales—is shut and locked.
We hear planetary-scale forces. Huge masses of ice being moved and careening into one another. The sound is the aggregate of a million processes.
Extremely dense and cold air masses push and pull, straining the ice, causing it to crash, crumble, ridge, and oscillate.
Underwater, we can hear much farther than in air. What is the aggregate of all of the sounds that the ice is making across many square kilometers? It is a chorus with voices as numerous as stars in the sky.
Season 4 “Migration”
Enormous pieces of ice collide and break into tall ridges.
This is the period when the process that results in the annual melting of sea ice begins.
Bearded seals begin to sing. These songs are the harbinger of the migration season. They signal the upcoming arrival of belugas and bowhead whales.
After a hard winter, there is now more reliable open water. The animals don’t have to fight every minute just to keep a breathing hole. The Arctic Ocean is finally navigable, and the animals are returning to their domain.
If there is a theme for belugas, it is “togetherness.” These are communities of animals.
Their “towns” move, and individuals don’t separate from one another. They are together.
Season 5 “Cacophony”
The ocean is alive—it is a symphony of animals!
We hear a community of individuals, as each one survives, lives, and sings. Thousands of animals are marching towards the most abundant feeding areas in the Arctic Ocean.
This is the best time of the year for Arctic marine mammals. After a long winter, they are going to feast, and they are singing together.
There are migration calls, trumpeting, and songs, both near and far.
The melting and breakup of sea ice releases a massive amount of bio-energy into the ocean. Algae grows in the ice. There are thick mats of microscopic plants growing underneath the ice, creating some of the highest densities of plankton and bio-mass on earth.
Season 6 “Bloom”
October is the only time when there is open water. Wind finally has access to the sea surface, creating waves that we know as the sound of ocean.
During the “migration” and “cacophony” seasons, all the biological productivity is released from the sea ice into the water. Both the inside and the bottom of melting ice are releasing energy, which becomes available for zooplankton, fish, and whales.
That energy is carbon pulled from the atmosphere. This carbon continues to release energy as it sinks, like a vertical wave of life rolling downward into the ocean. The carbon and nutrients fall like heavy snow onto the bottom of the ocean, creating a blooming garden of clams, crabs, and squids on the seafloor.
Bowhead whales are slowly moving from east to west, milling around, and can be heard in the distance.
Coda
The annual daylight is gone, it is completely dark. This is a very, very hard place to be.
A beluga was trapped under heavy ice. The beluga can be heard making this call sporadically over a period of about three days, then is never detected again…
