A compelling story can change the way people think, feel, and act. For Jim McClintock, Ph.D., Endowed University Professor of Polar and Marine Biology, storytelling might also be the key to fighting climate change.
“20 years ago, I decided that I would exploit my love of writing and speaking in order to transcend what most scientists do when it comes to giving a lecture on climate change,” said McClintock. “I want to use storytelling as a tool to get this message out.”
And that’s exactly what he’s done.
McClintock—a world-renowned marine biologist, researcher, professor, and author who focuses his work on the ecological impacts of climate change on marine life in Antarctica—has published two books in the past 10 years: Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land and A Naturalist Goes Fishing. Both are nonfiction “trade books” that have reached tens of thousands of people across the world. That said, McClintock wants to further expand his audience and continue to sound the alarm about the implications of climate change. His plan? Write a novel with complex characters set in Antarctica.
“I plan to use Antarctica as the backdrop,” said McClintock. “It will be built around the kinds of imagery and challenges that only Antarctica could bring to bear—that’s where my expertise comes in... If you can get a novel to take off, you have the potential of getting the narrative of climate change out to many millions of people.”
And, for McClintock, the message needs to reach people as soon as possible. Earlier in the summer, he was invited to join an Abercrombie and Kent (A&K) cruise through the Arctic. McClintock served as a scholar and lecturer on the ship, commenting on the sights—and changes—the 150 voyagers were witnessing as they navigated Svalbard, Greenland, and Iceland.
“What’s happening in the Antarctic, like all polar environments, is also happening in the Arctic,” said McClintock. “Polar environments are excessively sensitive to climate warming. A little increase in temperature has a huge impact.”
In Svalbard, for example, waterfalls stunned the A&K passengers. According to McClintock, when he visited the same site ten years earlier, he saw the beautiful cliffs and sea birds—but not waterfalls. Although the cascading water was impressive, McClintock believes that the new water is the result of melting ice.
As the cruise continued to Greenland, the passengers soon found themselves navigating a band of nutrient-rich water, which drew an array of marine mammals. “When you come off of the Svalbard Islands, you cross a shelf—this is an underwater platform—and the shelf hits this slope…and it drops steeply about 5,000 feet down to the deep ocean. What happens when you have a steep wall is that the deep nutrient-rich water… hits the slope and comes shooting up and concentrates nutrients in a very narrow band of several miles,” said McClintock.
“We penetrated that band of rich water and… saw four species of whales all in the same field of vision. We saw humpbacks, minkes, fin, and sei. To top it off, in the midst of all those whales feeding, there was a pod of white-beaked dolphins... Then there was a raft of several hundred Harp seals,” said McClintock. “To see humpback whales combined with three other species of whales and seals and porpoises, was, for me, a first in my life.”
For over an hour and a half, the voyagers watched the spectacular display. Thinking back to these moments, McClintock lamented: “This vast richness in marine life is now increasingly threatened by climate warming and ocean acidification. Arctic marine mammals are particularly vulnerable because the food they consume, whether plankton or fish, are experiencing declines in abundance with rapid climate change.”
The next stop on the trip was Greenland. When they arrived, McClintock was pleasantly surprised to see large, healthy polar bears—that said, several of McClintock’s expedition colleagues aboard a past A&K Arctic cruise had witnessed two polar bears foraging among birds’ nests and eating the eggs and chicks rather than hunting for seals.
“As the sea ice disappears… they’re going to continue to have challenges,” said McClintock. “One small population of polar bears have learned recently that they can hunt on glacial ice—so, instead of hopping from sea ice floe to sea ice floe like they normally do, they’re hopping from floating bits and pieces of glacial ice. It’s an example of adaptation to climate change.”
Thankfully, McClintock was able to share this insight with the passengers on the cruise in real time. For the general public, witnessing polar bears leaping from one piece of glacial ice to the next might be a treat. During the A&K cruise, people learned that there’s much more to the story.
And, although the trip is over, the story continues. Whether it’s lectures on Arctic or Antarctic cruises, fictional books set in Antarctica, or visual art, McClintock plans to continue seeking ways to effectively (and creatively) share the story of climate change and prompt real action.
“When I get a guy coming up and saying, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever heard this stuff and now I really believe it’s happening and I didn’t before,’ that’s huge for me. It may be only one or two people after a talk, but you never know how far that goes,” said McClintock.
Others are joining his storytelling circle too, including a group of professional theatre actors who recently staged a performance of Ushuaia Blue a play scripted by New York playwright Caridad Svich, loosely based on McClintock’s life and book, Lost Antarctica. The theatrical production was featured at the recent prestigious Contemporary American Theatre Festival at Shephard University in West Virginia, and McClintock made the trip to see it. The performance brought tears to his eyes—and, unsurprisingly, it also prompted meaningful questions from the cast after the show.
“I met [the actors] after the production… I’ve given them all copies of Lost Antarctica. They wanted to know all about Antarctica; they wanted to know about climate change,” said McClintock.
Perhaps his strategy is working, one story at a time.
McClintock leads A&K expedition cruises to the Arctic and Antarctic each year. For more information contact him at mcclinto@uab.edu.
