From Michael Marten’s series, Sea Change, which explores rising sea levels from regular tides and also climate change. His statement:

‘Sea Change’ is a study of the tides round the coast of Britain. The views in each diptych are taken from identical positions at low tide and high tide, usually 6 or 18 hours apart.

I am interested in showing how landscape changes over time through natural processes and cycles. The camera that observes low and high tide side by side enables us to observe simultaneously two moments in time, two states of nature.

Recent landscape photography often focuses on human shaping (and reshaping) of the environment - urbanisation, globalisation, pollution. Even when critical and committed, this approach can emphasise, even glamorise, humankind’s power over nature. I’m interested in rediscovering nature’s own powers: the elemental forces and processes that underlie and shape the planet.

The tides are one of these great natural cycles. I hope these photographs will stimulate people’s awareness of natural change, of landscape as dynamic process rather than static image. Attending to earth’s rhythms can help us to reconnect with the fundamentals of our planet, which we ignore at our peril.

‘Sea Change’ also comments on climate change. The tide floods in and quickly recedes again, but rising sea levels will flood our shores and not recede for thousands or millions of years. Many of the views in these pictures may have disappeared in 100 years’ time.

— Michael Marten

Lens Culture

I just read about one of the strangest hunter/gatherer rituals on Deep Sea News. Kangiqsujuaq is a village in northeastern Canada. When the tides go out, ice is left on the beaches and ocean floor (it’s a very big tide). Locals have 30 minutes to literally chop into the ice, jump in the hole they made, and gather mussels on the sea floor.

Sounds bizarre, right? Watch the video.

The people of Kangiqsujuaq in Canada go to great lengths to add variety to their diet of seal meat, venturing under the sea ice during the extreme low tides of the spring equinox to gather mussels.

It’s a race against time. They have less than half an hour to search these temporary caverns before the tide rushes back in. A look-out keeps watch for the returning tide, but warning shouts can’t be too loud in case the echoes bring down the ice.

Supermoon and wind turbines near Palm Springs, California.