1Frame4Nature | Chris Linder
What YOU Can Do:
- Make your voice heard! Join the March for Science on April 22 in Washington, DC, at one of nearly 500 satellite locations, or virtually.
- Attend an informal science lecture at a coffeehouse or pub (find one near you). These are great settings to learn about new research and ask questions.
- Experience science firsthand as a citizen scientist. Earthwatch enables volunteers to join science expeditions around the world. You can spend a week tracking whales off Costa Rica, measuring sea turtles in the Bahamas, or helping with penguin research in Argentina.
–1Frame4Nature is a collection of images and stories from around the globe of your personal connection to nature. However small, when combined with the actions of others, your individual actions can impact real and tangible outcomes for the preservation of our planet. Submit your story now!
iLCP Senior Fellow Chris Linder‘s 1Frame4Nature: Celebrating Science
I have spent the last 15 years documenting science fieldwork with my camera. I have followed researchers over glaciers and down rivers and through swamps and across oceans. I have shared freeze-dried dinners with them in wet tents in Alaska, celebrated birthdays aboard zodiacs in Antarctica, and swatted countless mosquitoes with them in Siberia.
Researchers use a helicopter to retrieve an autonomous underwater vehicle before it is crushed in the sea ice. Based aboard the Swedish icebreaking ship Oden, the science team used newly developed unmanned vehicles to search for life at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.
Why do I do this? First, the answers they find hidden in those swamps and ice sheets are important and fascinating. Every piece of information they record, no matter how small it may seem, is something we didn’t know the day before, and that is something that should be celebrated and shared.
Cape Crozier, Antarctica, is one of the windiest places on the planet. Penguin scientists camp here for 3 months every year to study Adélie penguins. They sleep in Scott tents, initially designed by legendary explorer Robert Falcon Scott to resist the relentless wind.
My second goal is to communicate how this data is collected. I photograph behind the scenes moments—loading helicopters, designing robotic vehicles, and even cooking meals—because that’s what makes science real.
Blaize Denfeld collects a water sample from the Panteleikha River in Siberia. Blaize’s first experience with fieldwork was as an undergraduate with the Polaris Project, an education and research initiative that introduces students to fieldwork in the Arctic. That research experience changed her life; now she’s a researcher at Umeå University in Sweden.
Dr. Kerri Pratt from Purdue University measures “brinesicles” (salty icicles) forming on the underside of a block of sea ice, Barrow, Alaska. It was a constant struggle to stay warm in the -20 to -40 C temperatures.
It’s one thing to read the news about a recent discovery, but when you see what it takes to make those measurements, if you can feel how cold and wet and miserable and tired a science crew is at the end of month at sea on a research ship, then you gain a whole new appreciation for that data. It’s real. And that’s what I’m using my photography to share.
Expeditions to the polar regions, like this one to the Bering Sea in April aboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, require a diverse team to succeed. Here, a Coast Guard enlisted sailor watches for polar bears while scientists collect samples on the sea ice.
On Earth Day, April 22nd, people will celebrate science through the March for Science. In Washington DC and nearly 500 satellite locations, the March will emphasize the importance of science in all of our lives.
Patrick Neumann (left) and Allison Heater (right) attach support lines to the Alvin manned submersible’s science basket following a dive in the Gulf of Mexico in 2014. Since 1964, the Alvin submersible, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has completed nearly 5,000 dives to the seafloor. It will soon be certified to dive to 6,500m, giving scientists access to 98% of the seafloor.
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This article is part of the 1Frame4Nature Campaign. Share a picture and story on Instagram with the hashtag #1Frame4Nature, of your personal connection to nature and tell us what action you’ve taken on behalf of our planet.