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This ship is really moving.

Even though it's a huge ship, it's still getting tossed around

by the amount of swell we're getting.

There's spray coming over here, so be careful!

The Southern Ocean offers no mercy

for those without sea legs.

The 15,000-ton research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough

punches deep into waters

that help hold the balance of our world.

What they discover

could reveal the changing course of our planet.

The flagship of Britain's polar research fleet

was built for seas like this!

It's a bit of a perfect storm, if you will,

of conditions to get the biggest seas in the world.

For a salt-soaked oceanographer like Geraint Tarling,

the Drake Passage isn't just about hanging on for dear life -

it's about what's going on under all of that the thrashing water.

This is an incredibly stormy part of the Southern Ocean.

This is where the Antarctic Circumpolar Current

comes into this narrow choke point

and there you have huge amounts of energy

as you can see around us now.

This is where the waters

that are coming in from all parts of the globe overturn.

They go really deep, and other waters come up.

It's this storminess, this activity,

all this energy is just driving everything else

that the oceans are doing.

It really is magnificent to see

the power of this ocean around us.

For all its fury, this system is finely balanced.

And that balance is starting to shift.

Over the next eight weeks,

the ship will explore the waters around Antarctica.

Onboard, 70 scientists and ship's crew

gather crucial data on how our polar seas are changing,

and what that means for life on Earth.

Before long,

Antarctica’s ice presence announces itself.

Lots of icebergs today actually,

and the winds starting to pick up as well,

so that makes things interesting.

This is an ice-capable vessel.

So it can break sea ice,

frozen seawater.

Glacial ice,

which is land-derived ice like big icebergs,

that's very, very hard ice.

Ships can't win in a battle against glacial ice.

If you hit an iceberg,

you will do massive damage to the vessel.

Radars can pick up most of them,

but they don't pick up all the icebergs

so you have to rely on spotting them visually.

As autumn settles in,

the Southern Ocean teeters on a transformation.

Ice begins to form a frozen crust

that will nearly double the reach of Antarctica,

as the continent extends its icy grip over the ocean.

Sea ice is one of Earth's great superpowers,

helping to shield the planet,

reflecting more than 80% of the sun's radiation

back into space.

It controls how oceans breathe, mix, and cool.

Each winter, sea ice pulses to life.

Then naturally retreats with the changing seasons.

In recent summers, Antarctic sea ice has fallen

to nearly 30% below the long-term average

as ocean temperatures rise.

At the polar opposite end of the world,

the change is even more dramatic.

Here, summer sea ice has declined more than 40%

since satellite records began.

Understanding exactly how this is happening

is now critical.

And the search for answers has been set in motion.

Over the skies of Greenland, US aircraft are on a mission.

But this is not a military operation.

Onboard are teams of scientists

trying to decode the forces behind vanishing sea ice.

Yeah, we are ready.

426474, we see we're 8,000 above you.

Copy.

The aircraft function as flying laboratories,

designed to help forecast the future of the Arctic.

The old Arctic, in the center,

it was just permanently frozen.

The ice cover shrank in the summer,

but it never went away completely.

But that is now changing.

We may be heading into a time

where the permanent sea ice is going away,

and that's what we call the new Arctic.

The US space base, Pituffik,

lies just 900 miles from the North Pole.

Built at the dawn of the Cold War

for Arctic surveillance and missile warning,

it now serves a new mission:

helping NASA scientists

understand the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Clouds and the sea ice are closely tied together.

And that has been understudied

because clouds are so difficult to observe.

The primary way that NASA observes planet Earth

is using our satellites.

It turns out not all science questions

can be addressed from space.

Getting observations directly inside of clouds,

it really provides a much deeper understanding.

We want to use the data to better predict

how our Arctic climate system is changing

and how that is impacting our global climate system.

In high summer, almost constant daylight

allows for long flight missions to take place.

But in the Arctic,

the weather can turn without warning.

So 8 knots.

8 knots? They were saying 20 yesterday.

The team gathers at 4:00 AM

to determine if the weather will be on their side today.

Flight planning up here in the Arctic

is really tricky business.

Some of the instruments on the aircraft

need more than a three-hour warmup time

in order to be ready to fly.

Even for an 8:00 AM take-off,

we have to start that process at 4:00 AM to decide.

If we can stay in this region,

I think that's the best chance.

With the weather looking stable,

the decision is made to launch.

The hunt for clouds is on!

Today's mission involves the coordination

of three aircraft,

each with a different job to do.

The high-flying aircraft, the G-III, that's a jet.

They have two remote sensors.

One is a lidar that profiles through the atmosphere,

gets us water vapor, aerosols,

various different cloud properties.

The Learjet is specifically intended

to just profile the clouds,

and it has a little radar on it as well to detect precipitation.

And the third one, The Princess, the P-3,

it has the science team

and most of the instruments for this whole research.

This aircraft, we use pretty much for everything.

Once we get to where we're going today,

we're going to do a spiral down

and we'll spend most of the rest of the flight down low

until we go back home, okay?

We will go real low at times.

Just so you know that. Don't freak out.

Questions?

Alright, let's take it up. Let's go!

Airspeeds alive.

80 knots.

Clouds don't come to you. You have to go to them.

So that's why we chase them.

Copy, we are going to level off at 3,474 km.

The plan is to fly across Baffin Bay

and up into the remote reaches of the Canadian Arctic.

Once there, the three aircraft will fly at different altitudes

to analyze the same clouds.

Are you seeing them on the tracker back there, 520?

Yeah, yes. I see them.

They're on us right now.

We're going in cloud again.

It's all liquid in this cloud.

What we've been focusing on is to go to these clouds,

target them, fly through them.

And that's precisely what the satellites cannot do.

Ready to go down to 300 then?

To understand how clouds affect sea ice,

scientists must take samples from every part of the cloud,

even if that means flying dangerously low.

Coming down low. Inching it down slowly.

Slow end of the line.

You know, the ceiling for us here in this

is 300 feet,

which is pretty close to 200 feet.

I got it, I got it.

The difference between 200 ft and hitting the water

and 300 ft and hitting the water is about a millisecond.

You may need that millisecond.

I think the surface is at -1.

We're not going to go down and find out.

No, no. I know.

The pilots aren't just risking their lives,

they're carrying millions of dollars

of irreplaceable scientific equipment

in the belly of the plane.

This is Maverik, the laser cannon.

He's designed to measure the chemical composition

of an individual single aerosol particle.

So we are talking one single particle at a time.

So not only are we trying to hit particle

that is 20 to 40 times smaller than a human hair,

it's traveling at over 200 miles an hour

as it's going through this instrument.

So we have to get all three lasers synchronized

at the same time in order to blast it

so that we can chemically characterize it.

I think that's almost a miracle in and of itself, you know?

We are back in cloud.

We are out of it at 1701.

Yeah, we're in and out of it. Yeah, boy.

The team are finding

that the Arctic's ghost-thin clouds

have a surprising impact.

People think about clouds as essentially cooling,

and that is true.

But here in the Arctic,

these thin clouds over bright surfaces,

they actually warm the surface.

If you don't see them in the satellites,

and if your models don't catch them,

then you're making a wrong prediction!

Just as they grasp

the crucial influence of these near-invisible clouds,

the real-time observations stop the team in their tracks.

About a week ago, all of a sudden,

on the northeastern corner of Greenland,

we got this huge opening.

So this is sea ice concentrations,

and we were seeing over here

that there is this wedge that started opening up.

And right now, there is this, what we call this "wedge"

that keeps opening up all the way to the North Pole.

You can see that all of the sea ice over here is gone

all the way to the crown of Greenland.

So even where we flew a few days ago

and still saw ice,

it has disappeared.

I did not expect that to happen. No.

Of course, I get concerned thinking,

"Well, if this is happening here,

it's kind of foreboding for the rest of the globe.

This dark wedge of open water,

advancing towards the pole, is a clear sign:

The ice is weakening.

Thinner ice is easier to move, easier to melt,

and far more vulnerable to break apart

with wind and storms.

It is kind of an early glimpse

into what we call that "new Arctic."

We might head into this seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean

as soon as potentially 2035...

maybe even sooner.

The Arctic has long been defined

by thick, multi-year sea ice.

Ice that survives summer after summer.

That defining feature is now disappearing.

In its place is fragile ice -

formed in a single winter,

and gone just as quickly.

As the ice thins and the ocean is laid bare,

heat takes hold.

Polar seas are now warming

at more than double the global average.

And that changes how these waters move, mix,

and steady our climate.

In the Southern Ocean,

scientists and crew from the British Antarctic Survey

study the shift underway.

90% of the heat that's been generated from fossil fuels

is actually being absorbed

into the deeper parts of the ocean.

It's in the Southern Ocean

where a lot of that excess heat in the atmosphere

is being soaked up.

Warming in the deeper layers

could slow down the ocean's circulation.

A circulation that not only draws heat down,

but brings life-giving nutrients to the surface.

Ready?

One, two, three, heave!

Weight coming on!

Without an overturning circulation,

the oceans would be a very different place.

It will all come to a standstill

and we'll have a very different planet.

Nowhere is the power of these nutrient-rich waters

more dramatically revealed

than on the island of South Georgia.

Cast adrift in the icy reach

between Antarctica and the tip of South America,

the island of South Georgia is often referred to

as the "Serengeti of the Southern Ocean."

A place where life gathers

on an almost unimaginable scale.

Thousands of elephant seals,

and fur seals

jostle for space on the fringes

of the world's largest king penguin colony.

400,000 of them cohabit an area

that's the size of New York's Central Park.

Now that's a sight to behold.

Every inch of the bay brims with purpose.

From hatchlings begging for food

to adults commuting home.

This metropolis of hungry mouths

traces back to a single species

hiding below the waves.

Antarctic krill may be no bigger than a paperclip,

But combined, they can outweigh

the entire human population of our planet.

Antarctic krill survive beneath the shelter of sea ice,

grazing on the algae that grows there.

As they feed on blooms of phytoplankton,

they quietly draw carbon from the atmosphere

into the deep.

But there is one creature that depends on krill

more than seals and penguins.

Blue whales are drawn to shimmering rivers

of these tiny crustaceans,

as the largest life ever to exist

converges on the smallest.

Diving down to 1,300 feet,

the whale drives each massive mouthful

towards the surface.

When humpback whales come to join the feast,

they coordinate their ambush,

herding the krill into a tight ball,

creating a huge net of bubbles.

Geraint and his colleagues have front row seats

to this feast of giants.

It's been like whale soup.

It's just... There's just whales everywhere.

You just see blows everywhere you look.

There is a connection when we see them so close.

If you stop the ship and they come to you,

you know it's their choice, it kind of feels like a gift.

The presence of so many whales

suggests there is plenty of krill around.

But to assess the health of the population,

scientists need to find a swarm large enough to sample.

Nightfall offers their best chance,

as krill rise from the deep

to feed under the cover of darkness.

And so, the waiting game begins.

Have you seen anything?

No, nothing yet.

Thank you.

Geraint and his colleague Dr. Sophie Fielding

are using a specially calibrated sonar

to search for signs of swarms.

We are pinging sound into the ocean

and the krill will bounce sound back to us really strongly

if they're in massive swarms.

But finding Antarctic krill around South Georgia

is never guaranteed.

Scientists can spend days at sea,

nights of watchful waiting,

and not detect a single swarm in a whole season of searching.

You basically have to stay permanently on tenterhooks

ready to do something,

and actually, that can be really, really tiring.

The Antarctic krill population is declining.

Each season's data could confirm a trend,

or signal something more sudden,

and that uncertainty keeps scientists on edge.

We know that the stocks go up and down

and we can see that through our past records

over the past 20 years.

We need to keep coming here to understand how they change.

- This could be something. - Oh, yeah.

Finally, the sonar reveals a krill super swarm.

The ship's maneuvers are now calculated

to stay on the swarm's shifting tail.

On the deck, the net is readied.

We've seen a brilliant super swarm.

It's at least a kilometer long.

We're going to deploy the net

and hopefully catch ourselves maybe a kilo of krill.

The ship must deploy the net carefully.

It's like dipping a teaspoon

into a 700-ton mountain of moving jelly.

A living mass that can slip through the water

and vanish in an instant.

By 3:00 AM, a blizzard has moved in,

but the tense pursuit is paying off.

Wow, look, yeah, so we can just see on our--

We've got a camera on this net

and we can just see these krill coming past us really clearly.

We can see them as they're coming through

into the tens or hundreds,

they tried to tail flip out of the way

and as they're doing, there's bioluminescence.

They've got all these photophores on them.

They're phosphorescing as well.

The largest krill swarm that I've seen

was around seven kilometers long.

- It's incredible, isn't it? - Look at that.

- Wow, this is really... - It looks like a snowstorm.

It is a snowstorm. That's really thick now.

It's blowing my mind just watching this.

Let's go down.

You get good years

and we know you definitely get bad years for krill.

It's great to be in a year

where there's lots of krill around.

Okay, guys, keep going, grab the red line. Okay.

Okay, try bringing those in now, Graeme.

Well done!

Heave.

Heave.

Heave!

And then there's, like, the hope,

the hope that it's gonna work,

because it's been such an effort to get it in.

And then the real great moment is when that net arrives on deck

and we see the krill that we need,

and we know that is a great sample

on which we can do science.

That's the best feeling in the world.

The krill are taken to the lab

to determine their species, size, and health.

That's really interesting.

Look at the size of that. It's amazing.

I know. It's phenomenal, isn't it?

They're absolutely humongous, aren't they?

I don't think I've ever seen a catch

so full of these large females.

They're just incredible.

Well, now look at this one, you see how soft it is.

I have, yeah.

So that means it's just lost its exoskeleton.

It's an incredible process.

Very few crustaceans molt on a regular basis.

So this one just molted

How often do they molt?

About every two weeks.

- Oh, wow. - It's like, yeah.

And you think about the biomass of krill,

how large it is.

I mean, the biomass of krill

is equal to the biomass of humans.

And if they're always losing their exoskeletons

every two weeks,

you just imagine the amount of carbon

that's actually exporting to the deep ocean.

Krill feed on tiny ocean plants

that draw carbon dioxide from the air.

As trillions of tiny mouths feed,

they effectively lighten the atmosphere's load,

converting carbon into biomass.

The fact that they form swarms really accelerates this process

because they actually are creating huge areas

where there's carbon raining into the deep ocean.

That's a really important process globally

that we really need to understand.

Discoveries like this

reveal the true superpowers of the polar oceans

in regulating our planet,

in ways we're only beginning to understand.

But krill survival depends on the sea ice,

for both shelter and sustenance.

Lose the ice,

and we risk losing these tiny carbon couriers

along with the balance they help hold in place.

Sea ice does more than nourish life.

It is the architect of this world,

shaping the seascape,

and the behavior of every animal that lives within it,

in both the Antarctic and the Arctic.

It's so calm at the moment,

we can see the sky in the ocean.

We've got beautiful reflections happening.

It almost looks actually, in the distance,

like the sea ice is cloud.

The Arctic's warming

three times faster than the rest of the planet.

The ocean here is changing very, very fast.

Ice forms later in autumn, and melts earlier in spring,

so we've got open water seasons for longer.

As the ice retreats,

the rules that govern life here begin to change.

Ah, we've got a seal!

This is a gorgeous bearded seal.

These are actually some of my favorites.

The bearded seal looks like an old man.

He actually has a big long mustache,

and I don't know why it's called a bearded seal.

I think it should be called a mustache seal.

They're so charismatic.

Most of the time, they're solitary,

and they use sea ice to rest on between foraging trips.

They just have the most beautiful,

strange, otherworldly songs

when they're trying to attract females.

Okay, this seal isn't singing today,

but it's hard to resist sharing their song...

because it sounds like an alien landing!

It sounds a little bit like that.

It probably looks like I'm fishing right now.

I'm fishing for sound.

An underwater microphone can unlock a hidden world,

revealing who's here, and what they're up to.

The Arctic Ocean is so quiet

and has been so quiet because of the sea ice.

It's a very, very quiet environment

that all marine animals have evolved to live with

and to take advantage of.

Until recently, the Arctic Ocean

has been almost devoid of human-made noise.

And that's because the sea ice that has covered the oceans

has been a natural barrier to ships getting in

and to other industrial activities happening.

Marine mammals use sound to hunt, navigate, communicate,

and to detect danger in the dark.

And at the peak of spring breeding,

hotspots in the Arctic Ocean can sound like a haunted house.

Scientists call this chorus of underwater voices

"the biophony."

Sea ice forms the perfect soundproofing

keeping animal sounds in...

and human sounds out,

which means declining sea ice

will profoundly affect polar wildlife.

The Arctic, when we think about it,

seems like a very far away, frozen place,

but we know that that's changing quite a lot.

The whole region is becoming more accessible to people.

There are future shipping routes that have been identified

in the Arctic and across the Arctic,

including right over the top of the world.

Whale song that once dominated

this loneliest part of our planet...

...now competes with the roar of passing ships.

The trans-Arctic corridor hasn't opened yet,

but shrinking sea ice

means a direct route over the north pole

may be possible within a decade,

creating a new frontier,

and a strategic prize for global markets.

In just a decade,

traffic has surged by almost 40%

and the distance ships push into the ice has doubled.

Because we have such quiet

baseline conditions here naturally,

even the addition of a few ships in an area

can really just double or quadruple

the amount of noise pressure that is in the water.

Okay, let's see how curious we can become for them.

Listening to sound through hydrophones

actually gives incredible information and insights

into the animals that are in an area.

Understanding the baseline soundscape,

what animals are used to hearing,

and then using that information to try and get an understanding

of how much industrial noise is coming

into different parts of the Arctic Ocean

and what that actually means for animals.

Like a slow-cooked pile of sausages,

walrus lie flipper to flipper,

a mass of bodies stewing in each other's heat.

With all the grace of a wet bean bag,

the lumbering tonnage of several walrus

take to the water.

Oh, look how beautiful.

This one now looks very elegant.

Must be also itching with all the sand.

I have heard, when going in the water,

it's also quite a relief for them.

Beneath the surface,

the walrus sounds like it's drumming on a submarine

with a teaspoon.

With a burst of air into his balloon-like throat sacs,

and suddenly, he has a whole new vocabulary.

Here in the Arctic, we've got such a diversity of sound.

And it's not just the animals.

We hear lots of natural sounds

as these air bubbles pop and crackle

from the glacial ice.

When we put the hydrophone in the water and we listen,

we feel actually like we're completely surrounded.

As ocean temperatures rise and sea ice retreats,

warmer water erodes the base of glaciers,

speeding their collapse.

There's a lot of rumbling.

Here it comes.

Look, look, look, look!

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

It's massive! Wow.

I feel very small right now.

And now look at the wave.

I'm just filled with awe...

sitting in front of this piece of history on our planet.

Even with bold action by all the world's governments,

the Arctic will still continue to experience climate change,

and so, we really have to understand

how Arctic nature functions

in order to be able to conserve it.

The good news is we know how to quiet the Arctic Ocean.

By slowing ships,

steering them clear of migratory corridors

and breeding grounds,

even designing quieter propellers.

It makes me hopeful

when I sit in these big international meetings

and I hear countries being concerned about underwater noise

and how that affects migrating whales.

And I hear members of the shipping industry saying,

"We wanna help, what can we do to help?

We wanna make our ships quieter."

So we need that kind of an attitude

and that kind of initiative.

What happens in these remote frozen worlds

touches every one of us,

reminding us that on a planet as connected as ours,

there is no such thing as far away.

In the Canadian territory of Nunavut,

the coastal village of Cambridge Bay

is surrounded by a sea of ice.

You need to grab your tractor.

- Tractor. - Oh, no.

Pamela Nakashook has lived here throughout her young life.

Living in such a remote area is peaceful

and it's a beautiful life,

It's cold and frozen here.

We're on latitude 69,

so it's way up north.

But my heart belongs to Cambridge Bay.

I love it.

I'm Inuk. I'm Inuit.

We rely on hunting for the food we eat

and for our living.

We depend on our sea ice to cross from Victoria Island

to the mainland.

Our freeze up used to be in October.

Now it's in December.

It's later and later every year.

And seems to be getting thinner and thinner.

It can be so dangerous too.

From a distance,

it seems Pamela is heading for the edge of the world,

but she's following a frozen highway

across the sea ice

to meet scientists testing an idea

as radical as the landscape around them--

one that might just help

preserve the ice beneath their feet.

Flooding water onto the surface,

using electric powered pumps.

It's a simple but labor-intensive process

that encourages the natural formation of ice.

It's extremely tough to work in the Arctic,

particularly for equipment and people.

Anything electronic fails really quickly.

Thankfully, it's quite physical what we're doing, in a sense,

because it keeps us warm.

But again, it is it can be

quite literally backbreaking work.

From December till February,

the team from Real Ice will repeatedly pump water

across the surface of one square kilometer.

installing pumps in the morning

and then as each day ends, returning to retrieve them,

so the pumps don't freeze over and buckle in the ice.

Alright, let's go to the next one, yeah?

Inch by inch, the sea ice should grow thicker.

The same cold that makes this possible

also makes everything more perilous.

Three, two, one.

Lift again. Three, two, one.

It's tough, but it's good.

There's nothing quite like the Arctic to humble you, right?

I realize that humans aren't as indestructible

as we think we are.

- One more - Put it down first.

Right, use the momentum, right?

Three, two, one.

This is something that I feel is in grasp

of finding some knowledge to just be clear,

to determine whether this is viable or not.

You know, humankind is incredibly innovative

and I find the furthering of knowledge and research

incredibly exciting.

That's it!

As one of the Inuit guides for the team

since their first field season,

Pamela Nakashook is keen to see

how the Real Ice experiment is progressing.

After weeks of flooding,

and the ice building layer by layer,

the results should now be visible.

How much ice did you measure so far with the thickness?

We've measured ice today that's got up to 130 cm.

That's crazy.

How is it taking them out? Do they freeze?

- That's pretty tough. Yeah. - Oh.

That's why we were drilling two holes with the auger,

to try to give us more space to pull them out.

Is it easier?

A little bit.

Darn.

Let's see if it will start.

There we go.

I do have hope.

I think it will work.

I think it will help a lot with climate change,

with our sea ice.

I think that it could solve a lot of our problems.

If this method can strengthen our sea ice,

that would help our caribou population.

Caribou have long been at the center of Inuit life

as an essential resource for survival.

Each winter, as the ocean freezes over,

caribou begin their migration.

Ice offers them a passage over an otherwise impassable sea

to reach winter feeding grounds.

As the ice thins,

the risk beneath each step grows.

Herds must take long detours to avoid open water,

and endurance is put to the test.

Now at the coldest point of the year,

the wind chill plunges temperatures

to perilous depths.

The team pushes through,

flooding the ice in brutal conditions

with no guarantees it will grow.

We're getting into the -45 realm.

The winds are a bit stronger

than what we experienced yesterday.

Drop her down.

Every time you close your eyes or blink,

and any of the moisture from your eyes then

are going onto your eyelashes and they're freezing instantly.

You see the hoarfrost on my beard and the mustache,

that's just from breathing.

Visibility's starting to get a little worse,

but we're going to plow on ahead as best we can.

It should be fully frozen at these temperatures

by tomorrow morning.

Very exciting to see the snow being flooded.

It's cool to see how it actually works.

It's colder than yesterday for sure.

The humidity, it really gets to you.

After three hours

of sea water being pumped onto the surface,

the team uses GPS to track how much new ice has formed.

Three hours of pumping. It's not bad.

Because we know how much water we pump per minute,

we can tell how much water we put onto this area.

Exactly.

And then equate that to the ice,

and then figure out how much energy

we have to put into the system to create that much ice.

- Yep. - Amazing.

You can see the way the boundary forms.

Just like lava.

This cold, icy layer

doesn't just build on the surface.

Stripped of its snowy insulation,

the underside of the sea ice freezes faster and thicker.

We've covered about 160,000 meters squared

so it all comes down now to the measurements,

then we'll have a good indication

as to how successful each technique is.

On average, flooded areas are almost 20 inches thicker

than the rest of the ice.

For the team,

it's just the result they were hoping for.

That's very cool.

It's quite emotional to see it for the first time.

It's great to be out on the ice.

To expand this experiment

across vast stretches of Arctic sea ice

would demand an extraordinary logistical effort,

on a scale never before attempted

in polar engineering.

But even modest gains in nearshore sea ice

could help those living on this frozen frontier.

I'm extremely passionate about what I do, I love it.

Right, into the sled.

I just wanted to be involved in a project

which is trying to restore an ecosystem

for Arctic wildlife and people here.

Our team has put everything into this,

trying to keep the ice here for as long as possible

whilst we reduce emissions

and transition away from fossil fuels.

We're taking action

rather than sit around and hope for the best.

We're taking this to the Arctic

to demonstrate that it could be possible.

In this place,

where sea ice has long sustained Inuit culture and Arctic life,

these first steps offer some hope

to a disappearing ecosystem.

Because protecting polar seas is not about the ice alone;

it is about securing the future ahead for all of us.