The sound of the Iceberg by stormpetrel

Southern oceans soundscape » The sound of the Iceberg

The sound of the Iceberg - mp3 version The sound of the Iceberg - ogg version The sound of the Iceberg - waveform The sound of the Iceberg - spectrogram 195733.0

stormpetrel

January 4th, 2013

This is the sound of an iceberg I have recorded in Antarctica in 2009. The iceberg was a big one, more than 40m high! Despite the icebergs are trapped in the ice shelf, they move due to the tide and the low frequency waves coming from the open sea which propagate under the ice shelf. Those movements produce very powerful and impressive grinding noise!
The iceberg was 8km away from the scientific base of Dumont D'Urville in Terre Adélie and far away from the open sea (at least 100km).

It was a bit challenging to do such record. It was cold (not a surprise) and very windy most of the time! This was also a place you don't want to stay too long as pieces of ice fell around.

Microphone: Rode NT4, homemade preamp, M-Audio microtrack II.

A picture of the iceberg is visible on my flickr page here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominique_filippi/4356182500/in/set-72157623332887396

Let me know what this sound does on you!

Comments

NorFre 1 year, 3 months ago

Hi there Stormpetrel! Thank You Very Much for this fabulous take!
I love it & used it on two occasions https://soundcloud.com/user-663972694/snowcaps-weepings and https://soundcloud.com/user-663972694/the-footprints-sequel-for-norbert?in=user-663972694/sets/electroacoustic-acousmatic
Hope you enjoy, cheers!
Colectivo_ViajeSonoro 2 years, 4 months ago

Beautiful sound! Very impressive. Thank you for sharing!!
jb_stems 4 years, 2 months ago

Impressive!!! <3
malupeeters 4 years, 10 months ago

wow! I never heard this sound before! Thanks! I was in Greenland this summer, on the big ice sheet, and our guide was telling us about the continuous - and dangerous - movements of the big ice, and of the sounds it produces that he heard on hydrophonic recordings, but I did not bring a hydrophone unfortunately, so I could not capture it! As it seems and as you have proven here, the movements are very audible in air too, depending on where you are near the ice I guess. Very powerful.
samantaray 5 years, 1 month ago

What a fantastic recording, and such a humbling sound, the slow incessant strength of that big lump of ice. Many thanks for going to the effort to record this experience and for describing it so well too.