In 2011, photographer Camille Seaman left the Arctic for what she believed would be the last time. Seaman had taken multiple trips to Norway, Greenland, and Antarctica since 2003, chronicling the vanishing reality of polar ice in an age of climate change. Depressed at what she saw there in 2011—and by the fact that so little was being done about it in the United States—she concluded that her work was having little effect.  

Then in 2016, the Norwegian company Hurtigruten, one of the oldest Norwegian coastal ferry lines, invited Seaman to join an expedition back to the Arctic. The company has a strong mission to create science ambassadors and educate passengers. Then, Seaman was told she could bring her daughter, Tala Powis Parker, who had just turned 17, to work on the ship. 

“I felt the privilege that I have being able to take my daughter,” Seaman says. “She may be one of the last of her generation to have known it as a child, to have seen it when there was ice in the Arctic—to have seen the massive icebergs of Antarctica or the glaciers of Alaska.”

Says Parker of the experience, “I thought nearly every day how what I was seeing could be gone in the next year.”

I spoke with Camille Seaman and her daughter separately about the trip, and about the ways in which they’ve bonded during the two decades that Seaman has chronicled the lucid beauty of polar ice, and its vanishing reality (click here for a slideshow of Seaman's photography). 

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Sierra: What was it like taking your daughter with you on this most recent trip? 

Camille Seaman: It was bittersweet. I have taken her with me all over the world, and she has been a witness to what’s happening in the Arctic as well. Her grandchildren may not have that opportunity. She was very much aware of that as she was standing in freezing water, or monitoring the penguin highways in Antarctica.

Sierra: This was the first time she had traveled with you to the Arctic as a young adult. What are your impressions of her experience? 

She's aware of the mass extinction that’s happening. She's aware of the loss of polar ice and the increase of storms. How does that not affect you? In the same way that maybe for my generation it was a nuclear threat or something else. Unfortunately, as part of her generation, she has this darkness. I don't want to say it's without hope, but it's just this feeling of, Yes we're pretty much screwed and thanks a lot. 

Sierra: What about you? What were your impressions about what you found on this most recent trip?

Last year, I was a little bit anxious or had trepidation about what I might see or what the conditions might be like. This year, there was still a lot of sea ice and massive icebergs, some of which we had to sail for two hours to go around because they were so big, floating in the Southern Ocean. There was so much snow on the land, and some part of me felt like Oh, this is the way it's supposed to be. But just four weeks later, it was amazing how quickly that snow had melted. The penguin populations seemed to look healthy and chubby. We saw an amazing amount of fin whales. I had never seen so many fin whales. There must have been hundreds; to see them in such abundance really moved me. 

 Sierra: It sounds like you were able to just take in the beauty in front of you. Did you find some semblance of peace in those moments?

I don't think you can be at peace with such devastation and colossal systems failure. But I also think that when you are looking at a disaster, it does not help anyone to freak out or be over-emotional. I sit on a council for the Uncertain Future of Humans that is run out of Clark University in Massachusetts, and through a very long series of council meetings, we took the time to actually grieve for what is being lost, for what will never be the same. It was very powerful to sit in that grief. Very painful. You realize that just like with any death, when you have properly grieved, it is only after you have grieved that you are able to say, “OK, now this is what we can do,” or, “This is how we move forward,” or, “This is what needs to happen.” It's only after you allow yourself to feel that real sense of loss and pain that you are able to start to see a light of what is possible, and you know, what is possible doesn't feel possible in the current regime that exists in this country. It feels like a huge punch in the stomach, and that we've been knocked backward many, many steps.  

But I am also hoping that people use this opportunity as sort of a slingshot. Let this push backward sling us forward even further, because, you know, the changes that were proposed by even the Obama administration are not enough. Nothing that has been proposed is enough. It will take the situation in the Arctic to get in a very, very bad way for people to start to say, “No, we need to do something more drastic, more impactful, more positive.” 

Sierra: What led you to that five-year hiatus from visiting the Arctic?

I was in a true and deep depression. That last year that I was in Svalbard, a young 17-year-old British boy was attacked and killed by a polar bear. That year there was so little sea ice, there was so little snow that polar bears were everywhere, and I started to have this incredible anxiety about having encounters with them. I never wanted to be the reason that we had to shoot or kill a polar bear in their territory. And yet, more and more I was having this dream about being attacked by bears or having to elude them. 

There was one scene in particular that was the final straw for me, and that was watching a polar bear go through a bunch of nesting birds, different kinds of birds like glaucus gulls and kittiwakes and little murres, just going nest to nest and destroying all these eggs. And I realized that this hungry bear had just wiped out an entire generation of birds that would never exist to go back to Europe, to eat insects that might destroy crops. You could just see it all had this ripple effect. I was sitting there photographing it, watching it live. I have photos of this bear just walking through and creating this havoc. It was just a hungry bear. How do you blame a bear for being hungry? So I came home and I told my daughter, who was 11 at the time, “Look, just promise me you won’t have kids and we'll just live our life and have a good time and that’s that. I’m done.” But at 11, in her wisdom, she said, “But Mom, I'm 11, how can I promise you I won't have kids?” She also said, “Besides, you have to try.” That was like a knife in my heart. Of course I have to try.  

And so I decided I couldn't get upset that my photos weren’t having the reach or impact that I wanted. I couldn't blame the world for that. So I became a TED Fellow, and then later a Ted Senior Fellow, and they put me on the TED stage and gave me that global platform. In 2014, I became a Stanford Knight Fellow, and I used that to polish skills [for climate activism] that I felt were lacking. I always felt, for example, a little insecure about my writing abilities, so I took a nonfiction writing course, and I took a drama course to help with my public speaking, and I took an executive communication course because I felt a little daunted every time I had to speak to an advisory board or CEO. So I took classes that would help to shore up parts of my skills that I knew I needed to hone and make stronger in order to get the message out better. 

Sierra: Do you feel that message is finally landing on the people you talk to about your experiences documenting the impact of climate change on polar ice?

Every time I speak, inevitably people ask me, “What can I do?” because recycling doesn't feel like it's enough. “What can I do to be a better citizen of this planet?” In the beginning I had no answer for that. And so I took part of the five-year hiatus to take a look at my own life and figure out, What does one do? What can one do? That felt much better. I feel like I am much more able to answer those questions.  

Sierra: How do you answer them now?

I say that it's a very individual and moral thing for someone. I say that what is right for me may not be right for you. But start by growing something—growing something that you will eat, putting your hands in the earth again and understanding the power of this planet and its desire to be abundant and verdant. When you start to grow something, to feel the power over that and the connection with the earth, and what you put in your body, then it becomes a natural progression: Well, how am I creating power? How am I using my power? What materials am I inviting into my life and where do they end up when I'm finished with them? So you immediately start to use less plastic and you go back to more metal and glass and wood, and then say well, Wood, but what about bamboo instead? So you know it starts this tumble effect, just by starting to grow something.  

You have to ask yourself, "What kind of world do you want to live in? Is this your idea of beautiful? Is this your idea of a future that you want to be in?" I think so many of us as humans forget that we are the authors of our reality. We are the authors of our life and our future, and we get to say, “This is what I want ” or “This is not what I want.” I feel like too many of us have become apathetic or surrendered that authorship. I want people to start to think about it: What is beautiful? Are you walking in a beautiful way? Is this the life that you want? 

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Sierra: I talked with your mom about what it was like to take your most recent trip to the Arctic. What was it like for you?

Tala Powis Parker: It was life changing. I’ve gone on trips when I was a child and was a passenger, but this was the first time I was on the other side, waking up really early in the morning to go out to the landing sites and be there for the guests. That taught me this whole other thing about the teamwork required working on a ship like that out on the ocean. I learned a lot about the landscape and the wildlife that I hadn’t known before. It was six weeks of nonstop learning about birds and the whales and the ice. 

Sierra: You were there supporting these other passengers that were also there to learn, right? What were your impressions on how the experience landed on them?

You can see the awe in their eyes. I really enjoyed the experience of working with them, because every day I was learning through them as well. They would ask me questions and I often would not know the precise scientific answer. I would then have to go do research or go talk to the right person to ask. So I'd go to the naturalists or the historians and say, “Hey this is a list of questions that I've been asked throughout the day. Can you please tell me like something more about this?” Then I come back to them and we have really interesting conversations about what they've seen that day, and that would open my eyes. 

Sierra: You have taken other trips with your mom up to the Arctic and the Antarctic. I'm sure you have memories of those other trips. How did you process it this time around?

I saw things then when I was a child that you cannot see now because of climate change. But at that point, I was not registering the fact that this may be the last time I ever see an iceberg that big, because I was just a kid. So when I went back it was a big wake-up call. Everything was different. Not just because of climate change, but also because I'd grown substantially and I had learned a lot between the years. I think I understood the importance of really learning there, and being outside as much as possible to actually see what is going on. 

Sierra: It must have been very compelling, in general throughout that trip, to be standing in front of landscapes that you know may never be seen again. 

My mom was showing me comparisons between two photos, one taken 10 years before. You could see the glacier was miles back. So it was in my mind. I thought nearly every day how what I was seeing could be gone in the next year. My response was to be so thankful for being here. But also, my being here is part of the problem.