A harvest underneath the ice
March 17, 2017 7:40 AM   Subscribe

 
That's amazing. Thanks for posting it.
posted by curious nu at 7:56 AM on March 17, 2017


Amazing and completely terrifying. Thanks for the post!
posted by rtha at 8:25 AM on March 17, 2017


So cool. As a kid I was obsessed with this book.
posted by TheCoug at 8:41 AM on March 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Its beautiful under the ice and No. Way. The hungry person who thought that chopping a hole in the ice and going down into a freezing damp cavern to collect dinner has my respect.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:46 AM on March 17, 2017


Wow. Like, really big, fat wow.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:16 AM on March 17, 2017


It makes me think of the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster when 21 triad smuggled Chinese pickers drowned.
posted by srboisvert at 9:17 AM on March 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty sure I'd end up taking a nap in one of those caves. It looks kinda claustrophobic but peaceful. So I would surely sleep through the ice cracking warning noises and would wake in the twilight to see the water rising at a foot a minute, knowing it's too late. I still think naps are worth the risk.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:18 AM on March 17, 2017


The story TheCoug linked to changed my life. In Grade 3, I was in the second lowest reading group. Dull stories, small words. But I could listen to the stronger readers read their stories aloud. When they read 'Very Last First Time', I was hooked. I don't quite remember how it happened, but I so wanted to read that book, to see the pictures, to know everything about crawling under the ice. I went from a reluctant reader to a bookworm.

Thanks for the links!
posted by Sauter Vaguely at 10:19 AM on March 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


The hungry person who thought that chopping a hole in the ice and going down into a freezing damp cavern to collect dinner has my respect.

The best archaeological take on Inuit history is that they developed their culture and food-gathering technology in the Bering Strait region around 1000 AD when the previous Dorset culture (which was there as well as all across the North American Arctic as far as Greenland) started declining in population. The climate was cooling, the Dorset food-gathering culture was maritime, and now solid ice shelfs were growing out of the land for considerable distances into the sea. The new Inuit ("Thule") culture exploded east across 90 degrees of longitude in just a few hundred years.

So the very root of the Inuit people depends very much on getting around the ice at the tasty, tasty protein.
posted by Quindar Beep at 10:28 AM on March 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm glad I don't like mussels.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:31 AM on March 17, 2017


The ice pans and the under-ice space is such a tempting yet dangerous aspect of life in the North that there's the legend of the Qallupilluit to try and frighten children away from them. I ran a kids camp in Nunavut and the parents were pleased to know I was reading kids those stories. Better scare all the kids than have a few tragic drownings.

Or, you know, there really are things snatching people away.
posted by LegallyBread at 11:50 AM on March 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Well, that got Lovecraft-y awfully quick.
posted by Quindar Beep at 12:02 PM on March 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope
posted by quaking fajita at 1:23 PM on March 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


There was footage of this in a BBC documentary series. Maybe "Frozen Planet"?
posted by veggieboy at 5:25 AM on March 18, 2017


Now I'm embarrassed because I see the video linked from the post. Sigh.
posted by veggieboy at 8:43 AM on March 18, 2017


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