The SEES expedition on film. Together with 50 scientists from many different disciplines and 50 science supporters we visited Edgeøya, an Island in the southeast of the Svalbard archipelago. The ship Ortelius, its crew and many guides allowed us to go on land whenever we were not hindered by the realities of the Arctic: weather and polar bears.
I collected mosses and small invertebrates that inhabit these mosses, and I will use eDNA to further see what lives in the moss. Maybe we will detect new species for Edgeøya or Svalbard.
In between sampling, talking to other participants and worrying about climate change and how fast this region is changing, I took photos with my Leica M4 and a 90 mm lens on Kodak TRI-X. It's a cliché maybe, but taking analogue photos forced me to stand still a little bit longer and helped me to connect to the place, the way other participants experienced the place, and the changes that are taking place.
Apart from the process of analog photography, I remember rocks, limited freedom due to weather, waves and polar bears. We should not have been there in the first place, because it is impossible to travel without traces. And who are we to go? Does collecting data as a scientist justify carbon emissions? Does sponsoring science justify carbon emissions? I did not leave the Ortelius with answers, but rather with a feeling of guilt. I also felt that the distance between us humans and the polar landscape was distorted by living on a ship, where we were treated as hotel guests. That made the contrast between going on land for sampling or an excursion and returning to the ship even larger.
