A gorgeous sunset has painted the Arctic pink. Singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock has romantically referred to the scene as a “bonfire on the horizon.”

But I am not fooled by her beauty: These are dangerous waters, and Cape Farewell does not want to give the impression that this is a pleasure cruise.

There are constant reminders. Like, when I went out to take photos of the “bonfire,” I was the only one on the side of the boat. If I’d fallen overboard into the icy waters, I’d have a mere minute of survival time before suffering certain death from the cold.

There’s talk on board that it was here, in the North Atlantic — in the freezing Disko Bay — that the Titanic went down. Now that I’ve experienced it, I’m amazed that there were any survivors at all. I can barely manage more than 10 minutes in the diminishing daylight before I have to head inside to warm my hands around a mug of tea.

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The first thing we heard this morning was KT Tunstall’s soothing Scottish voice delivering the wake-up call over the intercom. However, the first thing we saw was a city of icebergs so enormous they made yesterday’s look positively puny. I thought immediately of the word “awesome” — but not the adjective that has been overused by Americans since the 1980s. More like AWEsome. I was full of awe indeed.
We soon prepared to go ashore. What awaited us there was . . . well, not much. No town. Just snow and ice, and, of course, beautiful vistas and scenery. But I was nervous — and seemed to be the only Cape Farewell passenger who was. I talked about my anxiety with one of the scientists who didn’t do much to quell my fear. “You are right to be scared,” he said. “This is an extreme environment.”

The fearless singer Martha Wainwright reminded me that “a superhero” would be accompanying us: Ludwig — a Greenlander who stands at least 6′4”, looks like a pumped-up, Point Break-era Keanu Reeves, and has harpooned whales. That offered some relief.

Still, I thought, even Ludwig is no match for Mother Nature, and let’s face it, she mustn’t be happy with us humans right now.

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Back on the ship, David Buckland projects a giant crawling baby on to one of the icebergs. I interpret this as Mother Nature’s baby, and think about how mothers are almost always fiercely protective of their young. Is climate change Mother Nature’s way of taking back her planet –even if it means erasing the human race?

Greenlanding, originally uploaded by Cape Farewell.

Day 5 and this is the first textural blog I’ve managed to get out! A reflection on the amount of things I’ve been shooting so far.

Today we stopped to pick up more passengers (Graham Hill, Shlomo and Jude Kelly) so I took the opportunity to have a quick look
around the port.

It was a working port, a few large ships and a swath of smaller fishing vessels, so it was probably a little naive being surprised
at the sight of a whaling vessel off-loading it’s cargo.

The man on board snagged a chunk of flesh onto a hooked stick held by another boiler-suit-cladded fisherman who in turn slung it
into the back of a nearby pick-up. The amount of meat involved resembled the props department of a good horror movie, luckily for
the weak of stomach, the whole show was sugar coated with a blanket of falling snow.

Yesterday was a rather amazing 24 hours for me, it started by having breakfast against a backdrop of leviathanic icebergs, followed
by a shore landing at the mouth of the glacier reputed as having produced the ice which sank the Titanic. I then had Leslie Feist,
Jarvis Cocker, KT Tunstall, Vanessa Carlton and Martha Wainwright in my viewfinder at the same time. If that wasn’t already enough,
as night descended I set out on a zodiac (small boat for up to 12 people - coincidence?) with Chris Wainwright and using my new toy
from Elinchrom helped him turn whole icebergs red (for those who haven’t played avoid-the-iceberg in a rubber speed boat at night, I
highly recommend it). Finally, as a special treat, we were allowed to go to a bar on shore for the evening, where Kate, Luke, Leslie
and Robin (Hitchcock) performed on stage with the local band, Disko Bay Blues! Then to round it off, Jarvis held a disco of his own
using a mini record deck he’d bought with him - a class act that man.

I know this all sounds like I’m having a whale of a time (pardon the pun), and the truth is, I am. However, things are becoming
quite apparent to me, the pop-stars and artists on this voyage are passionate about climate change beyond what you might expect.

Who knows when I’ll get to blog again, I’ll try to make time, but right now the sauna’s a-calling (need to warm my globes).

Nathan Gallagher

350s on the beach of Qeqertartsuaq, originally uploaded by Cape Farewell.

We just passed the 48-hour mark of our 10-day journey aboard the Grigory Mikheev. We’ve traveled north from Kangerlussuaq to Disko Bay, and en route, heard from the two groups of scientists on board - one of which is mapping the West Greenland current and the other, characterizing sedimentation in the ocean bed in order to reconstruct historical sea levels.

Karen and Ludwig, our two onboard Greenlandic Inuit guides, talked with us today on Greenlandic culture. Funny story on that. The Lutherans converted a bunch of Greenlanders to their faith. They left behind the Lord’s Prayer. It includes the line “Give us this day, our daily bread”. The Greenlanders didn’t know what bread was (it wasn’t a part of their diet), and so they changed the line to something meaningful -
“give us this day, our daily meat”. “Lamb of God” was changed too, to “Seal of God”. That gave us all a chuckle.

Beyond that, there’s been lots of engaging discussion with the many cool cats on board. My roomie the photographer has taken and produced some absolutely smash photos; we managed a couple of 350s on the beach of Qeqertartsuaq, where we went ashore today; and I see that many of our crew have been blogging.

On that note, I must admit that I quite like this blogging thing - so far as I can say that this early in my blogging history. It seems an awful lot Doogie Howser-ish though. When were Doogie’s days? Were they 20 years ago yet? Doogie was clearly way ahead of his time.

Tomorrow we hit shore at the at the Ilulissat ice fiord, near the mighty metro of Ilulissat (population ~4500 and the “gateway to northern Greenland”. This is the area where religious leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faith traditions met last year to pray for the planet. Karen says that helped - Greenland had a cold winter last year. Last winter’s cold hasn’t much helped the glacier. The ice fiord extends 56 km to the face of the Ilulissat glacier. Ten years ago it was only 40 km to the face. It has retreated 16 km in just 10 years. Now it’s moving at a whopping rate of 38 metres per day.

People here have been talking for a long time about the changing weather. The New York Times ran a story called “How to speak climate” last month, based on what’s happening here in Greenland. How to speak climate includes using phrases like “I’ve never seen that before.”, and “Well, usually, but I don’t know any more.”.

It also includes “I had never seen rain in December before last year”.

David Noble

Director Peter Gilbert and documentary crew Zak Piper and Adam Singer film as the group climbs Little Eqe at the mouth of the glacier named Ilulissat Kangia (Danish name - Jacobshavn Glacier).