Witnessing a Major Glacier Collapse in Antarctica | The Dodo

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]As we were about to leave >> Oh, my god.

[00:00:03]>> something crazy and completely unexpected happened. That is absolutely insane.

[00:00:10]Oh, my god.

[00:00:13]And then, almost right at that moment, we saw our first whale.

[00:00:17]In one direction, we have icebergs collapsing, and you really start to see the impact of essentially what's happening here. And then, on the other side, we have whales at a distance. It's really magical, and it really kind of captures your heart. I don't think I've ever had FOMO looking left or right. Like, usually once I'm in the place, it's pretty good. The calving happens Oh, is that >> hear that?

[00:00:42]That phenomenon is called calving. That makes me so sad.

[00:00:46]And when we first saw it, our instinct was to scream, "Climate change."

[00:00:50]>> Oh, my god.

[00:00:53]The calving itself is actually a natural process.

[00:00:56]It's not necessarily given that if a glacier's calving, that's a sign of decay. It needs to happen. That's the defining feature of a glacier, that it's moving by its own weight. And so, when it comes to the sea, it will start calving. What isn't normal is how often it's happening. And according to scientists, the increasing frequency is a clear sign that temperatures here are rising.

[00:01:18]I'm sweating. And look, we're not experts, but what we can say is that coming here, we didn't expect it to feel this warm.

[00:01:26]It's very [laughter] hot. I had to layer off. How many layers are you wearing here? I have three layers here. We're doing what we can.

[00:01:31]>> [laughter] >> And if anyone needed a reminder that our planet is worth protecting, spending time in Antarctica makes the magic of it all pretty hard to ignore.

[00:01:41]>> [music] >> Can you talk about how you feel when you're going through the Lemaire Channel? I think what's making it so special is that it is the narrowest passage that [music] we're doing down in Antarctica. And you never really know how the conditions are there before you're actually almost entering.

[00:01:55]How is It is one no doubt.

[00:01:57]You wait for >> And it's not just in what you see, it's also in what you hear.

[00:02:27]Or what you don't hear.

[00:02:30]The silence you experience [music] has a way of making you feel like you've stepped into a whole other dimension.

[00:02:36]So now we will have a 3 minutes without phone, without noise, just to feel Antarctica.