CHUKOTKA 67°50’22.6”N 175°52’01.5”W
SOPHIE LANFEAR
“This is not a natural gathering. Not one made by choice. It is a new phenomenon brought about by global warming.”
no matter how meticulous our planning , nothing could have prepared us for what we would witness on October 18th, 2017. Indelible memories were etched that can never, and should never, be forgotten. The sight, sound, and smell of nature’s greatest and most tragic spectacle stays with me even to this day. They arrived under the cover of darkness during the long, cold polar night. We could hear them long before it was possible to see them. Their calls got louder and louder, until finally the knocking of their tusks reverberated through the cabin walls. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, partly from fear but mostly from excitement. I had waited years for this moment, and there was no guarantee it would happen in the month we had to film it. Waiting for morning to come so we could see them for the first time was tantalising to say the least! But just knowing they were right beside us was, in a strange way, comforting. We had come to Russia’s high Arctic to film Pacific walruses for a film I was making about the polar regions for Netflix. It was Netflix’s first David Attenborough series and my first film. My journey to Russia really began three years previously when I was researching walrus stories in Silverback’s office in Bristol, UK . I had reached out to an old Russian contact who put me in touch with Anatoly Kochnev, Russia’s most eminent walrus biologist. When I first opened Anatoly’s email, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It contained photographs of a beach with more walrus than I’ve ever seen hauled out along it. I knew straight away this story needed to be featured in my film. It was one thing seeing photographs of the beach so densely packed with walrus, while sitting in an office in Bristol. It was quite another to experience it in person! Safety was a major consideration. Adult walrus can weigh over a ton, and dozens of them were piling up against the cabin walls. These walls were built more than 70 years ago by native hunters on an ancient neolithic site, the relics of which still remain. Thoughts did cross my mind of a walrus crashing its way through the crumbling walls and joining us in our makeshift shelf beds! I’m not sure who would’ve been more shocked—the walrus or the seven cosy cabin inhabitants (eight, if you include the lemming that snuck into our sleeping bags for warmth at night). Thankfully Anatoly and another walrus-savvy scientist, Maxim Kozlov, had the foresight to board up the cabin window as darkness descended. Their effort had seemed relatively pointless at the end of each day—until it wasn’t. Previous experience taught them the hard way. As more and more walrus arrived, the calamity outside escalated. They just kept on coming, clambering on top of one another, finding what space they could. Young calves called out for their mothers, squabbles broke out to defend what little space they had, jostles erupted into heavyweight fights. There was a definite sense of unrest.
26
MOTHER VOLUME THREE
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease