Original subtitles

*

*

I'll try and get a biopsy sample from one of these guys.

I decided at a very early age

that the ocean and studying how animals behave

in these extreme environments

was something that was of interest to me.

****, look at that.

If you want to find the biggest animals on the planet...

****

Wow.

...in the most challenging, extreme place in the world,

you're talking about whales in the Antarctic.

This is just insane.

When you're that close up to an animal

that's 40 tons and 45 feet long,

we could put ourselves in a dangerous situation.

You have to sort of manage those emotions,

because it's so cold, if you end up in the water,

it's game over.

*

*

It's morning.

Out here, coffee doesn't stay hot that long,

probably about five minutes.

At least we have insulated cups,

so it takes a little bit longer,

but still you want to be drinking your coffee

pretty quickly, I think.

The Ross Ice Shelf team is hundreds of miles away

from any other human life,

on a floating chunk of ice roughly the size of Texas.

Does anybody here need water?

Keep hydrated.

There you go.

Over the last four days,

they've battled through the deadly shear zone...

We've well and truly opened this up.

...and a Condition 1 storm.

Because of the blowing snow and low visibility,

we're gonna just stay put until it improves.

All to learn about the ice shelf's past,

to help predict its future in a changing climate.

So I suppose this is where the real stuff begins.

It's kind of exciting as well,

that now we're actually on the way, doing our science,

and we've started to do what we came here for.

Been talking about it for so long.

Traverse this, traverse that. How much fuel do we need?

It's kind of crazy, we're doing it now,

which is really nice, but I'm still impatient.

I still want to start using the Thumper,

and start answering the science questions.

I'm pretty certain that we're going to lose

the actual ice shelf itself,

and parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet

at some point in the future.

It'll turn into water,

but it's where that water goes

and how much of it turns actually into sea level,

that's the big question, right?

Six, seven meters requires a whole reorganization

of how we live and our civilization,

because you write off

some of the most populated parts of the world, you know?

Downtown London, well, I guess that's gone.

In order to study the ice shelf's geological history,

they need to find sediment on the sea floor beneath it,

so they can sample it, as part of the project in future years.

I mean, we can throw the streamer out now.

Okay.

And then thump our way along.

We just want to make sure that this is the right place.

You know, we've just dragged all this equipment out here.

The immediate goal of just see the sea floor.

Make sure it's there and that it's flat and smooth,

and that there aren't big rocks in the way.

What number are we up to?

17.

For the science world, this is a big deal.

You know, we're talking about megabucks for us.

A lot of time, a lot of effort, from a lot of people.

There's a lot riding on it.

To determine if they're in the right spot,

the team will launch

a hydraulically-driven, 500-pound weight,

called the Thumper, at the ice,

and use the reflected sound,

heard by 96 geological microphones,

to create a picture of what they can't see.

Basically, we're slicing through the ice shelf,

through the ocean, and into the sea floor.

We turn that slice on its side,

and then we can see the different layers

inside the ocean.

Make sure you tap the snow out of these things.

So we don't have a short circuit, right?

Exactly.

So, our goal is to actually get that picture

of what's underneath the ice shelf.

We hope that our research will impact those people that decide,

right, climate change is a problem now.

This carbon dioxide is gonna kill the ice.

It's gonna melt it. We're gonna be in trouble.

We've been building equipment for six months,

and we're just really excited to actually get into it.

Ready?

Yep!

There it was.

You can feel that!

It didn't trigger.

Is it triggering on the way up?

It triggered up.

Well, ****, that's not good.

As soon as the weight drops, it hits the switch,

and it triggers the system

that basically triggers the microphones to start listening.

For some reason, it's not doing it when the weight goes down,

but when the weight goes up.

So, we're just trying to sort of figure out why it's doing that.

Didn't trigger again.

If the Thumper and geophones

are even milliseconds out of sync,

the results are worthless.

I think I can see the problem.

Their sled, it's got too many links at the back,

so now it's not centered properly.

So I think we need to pull it backwards slightly.

All of our systems have come from different areas

around the globe.

So our geophone, streamer, came from Germany,

our computer system and the geodes,

they came from the States.

So, it is a little bit nerve-racking

to see whether all of those components do interact,

and whether they work in an Antarctic environment.

Okay, it triggered. So that's good.

So we're ready to move up?

Yeah, move up.

If our team is unsuccessful

for finding a proper location,

then it is basically the end of that aspect of the program.

So, I think we are a little bit worried.

*

Go ahead and come up, like, you know, position eight.

Hundreds of miles from the ice shelf,

off the coast of McMurdo Sound,

is the US Coast Guard heavy icebreaker Polar Star.

She's come all the way from Tasmania,

then past the Antarctic Circle

to open a vital shipping lane to

resupply bases on the continent,

and after four days, they're only halfway done.

Can you give me a distance to Hut Point?

Approximately nine nautical miles off Hut Point.

We have to cut a channel that's 18 miles long.

We have to do it in a way that it's safe to navigate

for the supply ships that come in.

It takes us a good week of constant ice breaking.

What's our speed?

3.2.

And if you can imagine

trying to drive your car

through a cement wall,

it's very, very challenging.

You can see, as we're breaking through it,

some pieces are harder than others.

You can see the way it fractures off.

Pretty soon, we might have to back out of here,

and take another whack at it.

I mean, it's getting thick quick.

We go through a section where the ice is 10 to 12 feet thick,

but it's also very, very hard.

So it looks like this is the multi-year ice,

so, we'll have to start backing and ramming.

First-year ice averages one to six feet thick,

and thaws fully in summer.

But multi-year ice builds up over time,

and as air freezes in with the water, it also gets harder.

Let's back up.

At some point, breaking the channel,

ice will get too thick for us to have continuous ice breaking,

so we have to what's called 'back and ram.'

I have my rudder midship, and backing all three.

Aye.

We'll back up,

and we'll get up to about 6 to 8 knots forward,

which is 14,000 tons of ship going 6 to 8 knots,

making that ram into the ice.

Pretty significant amount of weight and momentum.

Looks like we're pretty clear back there now,

so I will bring it to all stop

and then start backing down on her.

Roger, starboard shaft, up to speed. Seven knots.

It's a very, very violent evolution,

to back and ram.

Imagine a 10, 12 Richter scale earthquake.

10 knots.

The ship's about to hit some ice right now.

Brace for shock.

It shakes the whole ship.

You can feel it up through your feet, up through the decks.

You're just trying to keep hold, and it gets violent quickly.

Are we up to speed?

Yes, sir.

How fast are we going?

Nine knots.

She's falling off.

Let's back up and see if we can try again.

Yes, sir.

The trickiest part of this process

is actually reversing,

because it means exposing the propellers and rudder

to huge chunks of ice they've just smashed off into the water.

Put the stern over, keep the ice out of your rudder.

*

Ease it, ease it.

Hey, what just happened?

Something, I just hit something.

Crap.

Starboard side.

What, what was that?

All stop.

Just trying to find amidship, sir.

Main control, con, what's the indicator saying?

Where's the rudder position?

Four right? We're showing...

Left four.

Four left.

If it got into the rudder,

it could disable the ship to be able to steer.

If Polar Star does not complete her mission

in breaking out the channel,

then the supply ships can't get in there.

We can't get fuel and food into Antarctica.

There's approximately 5,000 people in the continent

that depend on that food and fuel.

That is the overriding pressure on my shoulders,

is fulfilling that mission.

****

2,300 miles away

off the Antarctic Peninsula,

is the research vessel Ortelius.

Can you tell us which gangway, please?

Port side is ready now, port side is ready.

Dr. Ari Friedlaender's floating field lab

is a tiny inflatable raft...

in the vast Southern Ocean,

and today he's after humpback whales.

It's quite, quite windy this morning,

about 20 knots of wind.

These are pretty marginal conditions,

but we're, we're doing the science that we can get done

in these conditions, and that's the biopsy work.

It's too windy for the UAVs.

It's a little too choppy for us to try tagging,

so, we'll try to make the best of it right now

and take what the weather gives us.

We use a crossbow with a modified bolt that floats,

and we shoot it at the whale,

it takes a little piece of blubber that we collect,

that's about the size of, like, an eraser on top of a pencil.

And that little sample is absolutely critical for us,

because we can tell whether the animal is a male or a female,

if it was a female, if she was pregnant.

We can look at the genetics

to tell what population that whale came from.

We can look at what the animals are eating as well.

Alright, whales are up at about our one o'clock.

We're kind of cruising into the wind,

so I'm gonna try and parallel their track

and see if we can't try and get a biopsy sample

from one of these guys.

That would be fantastic.

While a biopsy on its own

provides a wealth of information,

the real prize would be a biopsy

from a whale he's already tagged.

He's had some success this season.

Sweet.

And he's back in the same feeding ground

to see if he can find the same whales again.

Once the tag goes on the whale,

then we're just kind of starting the adventure.

It's really important for us to try and collect a biopsy sample

from every animal that we tag,

because having that biopsy sample

gives you a much better understanding

of the behavior that you're seeing.

I'm not sure if that's one we've sampled or not, to be honest.

Can't tell.

No, it's not.

****

It takes patience to be a field biologist for sure.

Working the Antarctic probably takes an added level,

because of just getting the right conditions.

I never thought of myself as a patient person, to be honest,

but I guess you kind of have to be.

You're really at the, at the whim of the animals down here,

so, you take what you get.

I'm gonna kind of keep this heading,

and maybe we can get him on the other side of us.

The more we can do for each individual whale, the better.

It's an animal that we'd love to be able to see over time

and learn about the life history of that individual.

We can identify individual whales

by some very characteristic markings.

Humpback whales are great,

because the underside of their flukes

are a unique pattern of black and white.

Got a humpback whale right here,

just kind of slowly cruising at the surface.

Think that's the one we want, there,

with the smaller dorsal fin.

Awesome.

The biopsy crossbow can shoot up to 165 feet,

but the closer Ari gets,

the greater the chance he might startle

one of these 66,000-pound animals.

When we're approaching a whale,

human safety is the first concern.

When it's breeding season,

the big males, they'll come out of the water at you.

We don't want to do anything

that's going to make them react too quickly.

The Zodiac might get flipped.

And because it's so cold,

if you end up in the water, it's game over.

The worst-case scenario

isn't just hypothetical.

In 2015, on California's central coast,

a massive humpback whale launched out of the seas...

...nearly crushing two kayakers.

And in waters this cold,

hypothermia is more likely to kill than impact is.

See him underwater here?

Just let him take a look at us.

The things that go through your head before you do this

is you just want to make absolutely sure,

I'm in the right position, I've got the right angle.

I've got the right animal.

And then, don't miss.

*

This guy is diving.

Looks like we just missed that surfacing.

You see the footprint pretty well

where they went down,

and so now I'm going to give us a little bit of gas.

I don't see it now.

I see it.

*

*

I see him.

Ari's got a chance to get a tissue sample

from a humpback whale...

Just let him take a look at us.

...if he can hit a moving target from 50 feet away.

*

Got it. Got it.

It's hard to see the darts in the water here.

I saw where it landed, but I just got to go slowly.

*

Man.

So, on that shot, what happened was,

instead of hitting it flush on the side,

I kind of hit it and skimmed off of it.

So, what you see is just some of the skin sticking out.

It didn't get a big blubber sample.

Mostly just skin.

It's important to try and get both skin and blubber,

because the different tissues allow you to tell

different things about the animal.

Adult humpbacks can hold their breath

for almost 45 minutes, and swim 7 miles per hour or more.

If Ari loses track of this one,

it could be 5 miles in any direction

the next time it surfaces.

That was the whale we wanted to get a sample from.

At least you get an idea about the direction they're going,

and we can, we can kind of match

their speed and their course,

but eventually they're just gonna disappear.

Back on the mainland,

at Scott Base, New Zealand's permanent science station...

We have an absolute ton of work to do.

If we have a catalogue of the ones

that have been biopsied already,

we should try to especially keep an eye open for those.

The marine megafauna team

is also gearing up to study whales,

but instead of humpbacks, they're after killer whales.

We need to be the right side of the channel

so the light's behind us.

We need the right conditions on the water.

Well, we get less than three hours of helicopter time.

And this is Antarctica, everything takes

between three to ten times as long as you think it will.

Unlike Ari, they don't use boats.

They actually fly to the ice edge,

find a safe enough place to land,

and stand inches from open water,

to biopsy whales with darts fired from a modified .22 rifle,

and whatever data they get

could actually help regulate international law.

Got eight barrels, spare tips.

This is called Chilean sea bass

in New York restaurants,

but its real name is toothfish.

And scientists suspect that Antarctic toothfish

is a staple food for some killer whale populations,

and if we're competing with them for the same food,

the 25-member nation body that oversees the fishery

has to know about it.

*

We're trying to understand the ecological role

of the killer whale population in Antarctica.

We don't know how many there are,

and that's actually quite critical

if you want to know how many toothfish they're eating.

So we want to make sure that we don't...

make sure we don't make a mistake,

make sure we don't do something we shouldn't.

*

Whales are typically found along the channel

opened by the Polar Star, or on the edge of the sea ice.

Today, team leader Regina Eisert is picking the sea ice

to find animals,

and a stable enough place to land when they do.

You want it to be nice and dry,

and you want the edge to be really sharp,

and you want the ice to be thick.

Don't want any melt pools,

and you don't want any cracks

that run parallel to the, to the edge.

Worst-case scenario is you put the helicopter through the ice.

That would be bad.

It's usually up to me.

It's my decision as expedition leader.

'Tiling' is when seemingly stable pieces of ice

break off in large chunks,

making landing in the area a huge risk.

The ice edge concentrates the animals,

because they eat seals and penguins.

The whales don't want to be 100 meters away.

They want to be on that edge.

That's where all the action is.

All the action is on the edge.

You respond to what you see in the moment.

It's no good to us if the ice is really stable

but the edge is rotten, because I need to get right to the edge.

It might all be super stable,

but the entire front of the ice is mobile.

We can't go there.

*

Hey, so you want to look at some of this data?

The Ross Ice Shelf team has spent four hours

covering 1.2 miles, running the Thumper dozens of times,

trying to find the sea floor under the ice.

Now, they have their first set of data.

This is the first science that we're gonna do,

where we get the results straightaway.

So, that's the big curiosity...

are we in the right spot for the X?

It's exciting, I mean, everyone, everyone who's a scientist

loves to see results and data.

But you know, if it's not the result that we want,

then we'll actually have to think about

what we're gonna do next.

So, what we're looking at here

is sort of the really complicated sound signal

that each geophone receives.

After we send off the shot for sound to travel down,

through the ice, down through the ocean,

hit the sea floor and come back up,

should take somewhere around 0.4, 0.5 seconds,

about half a second.

If it's a really sharp reflection of the sea floor,

it should really be a very strong sound,

rivaling some of the sound traveling through the ice.

And there's no really, really obvious sounds in here.

So, there's nothing really there.

This is horrible.

It took four hours' worth of processing the data,

cleaning it up.

Can we see the sea floor? Can we see the sea floor?

No, we can't, it's not there.

It's kind of heartbreaking

when things don't work or when you fail.

But you know, you just got to keep going.

The next step is just go 20 kilometers downstream,

or 10 kilometers downstream

and have another look somewhere else.

We don't want to have to move the camp, so we'll keep looking.

It's got to be here somewhere.

*

The first thump we're actually compressing the snow

to take the air out of it and make a good surface,

and the second thump, this one here,

is the one we actually record now,

and it's always a better thump,

because we're sending, using all the energy

to get sound into the ice shelf,

and then it gets recorded by the geophones

that are on that line there.

*

Aww!

No.

The wee sled is suffering now.

I think we've broken its back.

Everything just gets ruined by the cold.

*

Everything just becomes more brittle.

So, your average nut,

which has got a little plastic ring inside it.

So, when you screw that on it should lock onto the bolt,

and it shouldn't come off.

In Antarctica, they just unscrew themselves.

*

Ooh, no, no.

The beginning of the end.

We're getting tired, the sled's getting tired.

We're just hoping that it makes it.

Come on, little sled, you can do it.

240 miles away

in the mouth of McMurdo Sound...

Main control, aloft con.

Could you check out the steering gear?

We're seeing some fluctuation in the readings up here.

The Polar Star is dead in the ice.

Our rudder indicator isn't agreeing with the helm.

And Captain Walker can't restart the engines

until he's sure there's no damage

to the rudder or propellers.

But they're over 20 feet beneath the surface,

and there's only one way to check for damage.

Put two people out in dry suits to inspect it.

If there's damage to the gear under the water,

I really have no way to tell what that damage is.

I don't have a camera mounted on the hull

that I can look at the propellers and the rudder.

Alright, on the side, headin' divers.

Headin' divers.

So, I will send my dive team over the side,

and they will do an underwater inspection of the ship

to make sure everything is sound.

Alright, hey, remember,

if those things go over your hood,

you might get water or air intrusion up under there.

Be aware.

Good?

We'll go ahead and put the brow over.

*

Our most important mission, while we're down here,

is to make sure the ship continues running.

The running gear, the props, the rudders,

make sure that everything is good down there.

Alright, I got to watch them now.

Yeah, of course.

To make sure the propellers

have stopped spinning,

the divers have to give them wide berth.

Green divers.

A path that takes them under the unbroken ice.

Sending divers in the coldest water in the world

is a decision I don't take lightly.

It's a very dangerous operation

for the divers to dive under ice.

If something should happen, they could be stuck under that ice.

I'd never be able to get them out.

Hey, tell green diver his line is snagged

on the ice someplace.

Have red check his lines.

Red diver, take a look at green.

Both divers, this is Dive Supe.

Can you see each other right now?

Hey, red, turn to your left!

Green, take a look up so you know which way to go.

****

*

Red diver, take a look at green...

20 feet underwater...

****

...Coast Guard divers are trying to check the props

and rudder for damage.

Hey, red, turn to your left.

But one of them is caught on the ice.

Red diver is trying to assist him right now.

Is he good?

Okay, both divers.

There they go.

Now the fun begins.

I only have one rudder.

If I lose it, I can't steer the boat.

This isn't the normal world.

This is Antarctica.

And we have to do dangerous things.

The overriding pressure on my shoulders

is fulfilling that mission to resupply Antarctica.

*

How we looking?

Alright, just keep it here

and put the engines on 30-minute standby.

30-minute standby.

Got a big orca back here.

*

*

This western sheet looks better attached, in general.

Yeah, I can't see any cracking

or pressure lines there, or melt pools, so.

The ice looks good. I haven't seen any whales.

The marine megafauna team left killer whales behind

at the edge of the sea ice,

because it wasn't stable enough to touch down on.

Now they're in the channel,

where the ice should be sturdier.

We got nothing.

You can see a long ways from a helicopter.

We didn't see anything.

We should just go back.

Now, I don't know if we'll get the clearance to do it, but.

Let's have a look at this site.

Maybe put the hydrophone in?

Okay.

To do this kind of research,

you only go out when it's safe to go out.

It's my decision as expedition leader,

and when there's real clear and present danger,

you can't work,

and it's very frustrating, but science is like that.

Can you find us a spot

where you can put the hydrophones in the water,

so I can actually listen

to see whether there's any whales around?

Yup.

We can put hydrophones in, which we use anyway,

to record their vocalizations,

which are very, very interesting,

because they've got quasi languages,

so we can actually identify that group from their dialect.

And you can hear them from quite a long way away.

So, we can often hear them

a long time before we can see them.

So, we get early warning.

So turn one on.

And then we just throw it in the water.

*

If it still doesn't work, we should move.

We don't have to stay in one place for hours and hours.

I hear whales.

Ben.

Yeah.

Whales.

There's lots of squeaking going on.

Alright.

Hearing a whale on the hydrophone was never, for me,

a reason we should stay in one place,

because you can hear a whale on the hydrophone

and never see one.

Yeah, but you can probably hear them from five miles away.

Thinking we should get the rifles.

****

Alright.

The better strategy is you go where they are.

In terms of just not seeing any whales

and expecting them to show up,

it's a loser's game, in my opinion.

*

Where is he, where is he?

*

Here we go.

No penguins, please.

You know, my perspective is always the same.

You got to hunt them where they are.

I can hear whales very clearly.

Excited, little, squeaky whales.

But they're not here.

I think if we are able to go back to the place

where we actually saw the whales,

that's the preferred option.

Where there was floating tiles offshore,

we had whales against the edge.

But where the tiles are coming off,

what they're saying is if we, if we land the helicopter

on a piece that's coherent enough,

even if it does technically constitute a tile,

if it's not going anywhere,

and the helicopter is in the middle of it, we can land there.

So it'd be better to be in a place where the whales are,

rather than waiting for them to come along.

Okay.

If we have any reasonable hope that they will show up

in our location, we tend to stay put.

But if there's no whales, then there's no point.

Let's roll.

*

*

Eyes out, let's look and see if this thing comes up.

After missing his first shot at a biopsy,

Ari's tracking the same humpback,

for a chance at redemption.

I see it.

Whales are up about 80 meters.

Kind of moving upswell.

There's our guy.

Smaller dorsal fin, barnacles.

*

*

Amazing.

Just go grab the dart now.

Alright. Excellent.

So, successful shot.

You can see the blubber hanging out of there.

There's the whale, no worse for wear, back up at the surface.

Alright. I think we hit a homerun today.

Man.

That was the whale we sampled.

Man.

*

This is just insane.

It's going right underneath us.

When the whales choose to come over and check us out,

we kind of sit back and let it happen, for the most part.

It is definitely a little bit of a role reversal in some ways.

To make eye contact with a whale is pretty humbling.

You can tell that there's something going on

behind there.

There's a living animal that's thinking about something,

and it's a pretty strong connection.

We've got two really friendly, curious whales here,

really unique opportunity for us to see the animals up close.

There is no place in the world

where you feel smaller than Antarctica.

The fact that you're working with animals

that are as big as, you know, a school bus,

it makes you feel small very quickly.

This is extreme wilderness.

This is nature without any filter on it,

and for us to have the opportunity to be there,

and to work in that environment,

to me, I couldn't ask for anything more.

*

2,100 miles away

on a virtually unexplored mass of ice...

*

The Ross Ice Shelf team is in a new location,

looking for a clear picture of sediment

on the sea floor under the ice.

The extreme conditions can be lethal to machinery.

And they're running out of time.

Come on, you bastard.

I think it's giving up.

In Antarctica, because it's so cold, everything contracts.

Metal shrinks, and it gets more brittle.

Nuts get smaller and screws get smaller,

and so things just start to unscrew themselves.

The environment just ruins everything.

Electronics generally tend to fail.

So, our steel plate, it's slowly started to,

like, all the nuts have started to undo themselves.

Now they've gotten so loose

that basically the plate has come up

and then rotated around that one bolt that it was still stuck in.

So now we need to put it back in place.

Wow, so we completely smashed its spine.

Yeah.

And you can see where all these cracks are going here

from where the steel plate was,

'cause it's repeatedly being hit there.

So the thread on these is completely buggered.

So this is basically where the weight

has occasionally clipped it,

and it's just ruined that thread,

which is why the nuts came off.

It's just had it.

Is there any other way we can try to keep this on?

I'm gonna use a sledgehammer,

and I'm gonna bend these.

It's got to make it.

I keep saying in my head everything will be fine,

don't worry about it.

Because if the Thumper dies, we're gonna be in trouble.

There's a lot riding on it.

We need to find the spot.

We need to succeed.

That might be enough.

Alright. Back in.

I'm more worried about the wood,

whether the wood is gonna survive another round or...

*

I just wonder how long it's going to last.

On the side, divers coming to their next stop.

Next stop, surface. This will be a NO-D dive.

The Coast Guard dive team didn't find any damage

to the ship's rudder or props.

On the side, divers moving back,

until the ten's straight up and down.

So, while the divers are recovered...

He's checking the fuse right now.

It's up to engineering to figure out

why the ship's systems aren't working.

Main control, what are you guys showing

your rudder's at right now?

Left 29.

Left 29.

How does it show in the steering gear?

I'm showing it reading 10 left.

Alright, switching both to local.

Hit the start button.

There you go.

Polar Star is a very old ship.

We have 21st century,

state-of-the-art

control systems,

but the sensors to that

control system are probably

designed during

the Johnson Administration.

Con, main control.

Sure, we'll cycle.

Cycle the rudder.

We're gonna go back to left four,

see what it shows back there.

It's showing four left right now.

Roger, okay, we'll go ahead

and steer off the analog and ignore the digital.

Roger, let you know if we have any more issues.

Alright, let's do it.

It appears to be just a fluctuation in indicators.

We have digital helm, we also have an analog.

They're off a little bit.

The analog appears to be more accurate than the digital.

Try to get close to the ice edge.

Aye, aye.

*

I can see them offshore.

The marine megafauna team is back over the edge

of the sea ice, hoping to find a safe landing zone.

But with the whole edge tiling off,

they have to land further from the whales than they'd like.

When you finally are there,

you don't want to be even 30 meters wrong.

30 meters is too far.

You've only got a narrow window of time to actually deliver.

You have to strike when the iron's hot.

We've got some right on the edge here.

There's one spyhopping,

it was half the whale came out of the water right over there.

Nice. There we go. Right there.

Let's go there. Let's go there. Yeah? You happy?

Wow, that was a big fin.

That's a big fin.

Whoa.

It's not safe here.

****.

I just saw the whole horizon move on it.

Ben, give this a wide berth.

It's all cracked off.

Have a good look. Come here.

See that?

It's moving in the swell.

That means this whole piece is detached

and will go out at some point.

Because of the work and time and money

that's gone into everything,

it's very frustrating when you got everything lined up,

and then I can't do my work.

You got to be kidding.

That's moving.

We're not gonna catch those guys, are we?

At least we're going the right direction.

No, we're not gonna be on that side.

Standing on the same edge and seeing nothing

is, is frustrating, but that's, that's science.

The real frustration is not being able

to stand on that ice edge.

To be so close and then to be prevented in the last step,

that's the part that winds me up.

So I think tonight's another, another zero.

It can feel like a real pressure cooker.

You know, you've come so far

and you feel your trip slipping away,

so every moment is critical,

'cause you might not get another chance.

Yeah, no biopsy samples.

Um, yeah, a bit frustrating.

But I hope we can make the last couple of days count.

It just sucks.

Yes.

*

If we just start looking at the processing flow,

the system's up on the screen here.

The Ross Ice Shelf team squeezed just enough life

out of their Thumper

for one last chance to find the sea floor under the ice.

Pretty shoddy reflection.

Yeah.

And now, it's the moment of truth.

You can sort of see a little reflection in here

at about two point, 210, maybe?

Yeah.

We've got each of the shots stacked together,

so you can see, here's the 35 shots or so along the top

where all these little things come to a point.

They look like a dog's breakfast.

There's something there, at the base of the ice.

But somewhere down here, we're sort of expecting...

So maybe about six?

Scroll down.

My God, look at that.

Whoa.

- There you go. - What's that?

We have sea floor.

We have sea floor?

And it looks good.

Yeah, it's at about 780 milliseconds, I'd say.

Very relieved actually after all last night.

After promising it was gonna take an hour,

and it took closer to 12.

A project like Ross Ice Shelf

takes several years to do,

and we're going to hopefully find out

how the Ross Ice Shelf got to where it is today.

That's what I'm really looking forward to,

and that's the next bit of science

that's really going to, you know, blow our minds.

Well, we've only spent a year planning

and several hundred thousand dollars,

and $40,000 building a Thumper,

and bloody another $2,000 shipping,

and $200,000 streaming here,

and getting all these electronics from the US.

I mean, you know.

Minor details.

Every single bloody step was a fight.

Every single step was not easy.

Success.

All the planning that's gone into it, suddenly it's real,

and now, now the next thing we're thinking is,

right, so what does the rest of it look like?

We've got one spot, how about the rest of it?

You know, we want to just explore more now.

All the excitement! Good news is what I like.

We've got the sea floor.

Yup.

We're in the right spot.

We're in the right spot!

Pretty happy to be at our final destination.

We're here in the right spot.

My gosh. So exciting.

There's still a lot more to come,

and it's really, it's just the getting there part.

So, we are gonna have to set up camp,

and then we need to build a runway

to get some fixed-wing planes to come in

and drop us out some equipment, and some more of the team.

It's really just the first step in quite a massive process

of the next couple of weeks of work.

Great day, everybody.

And, yep, loads to do.

Okay. Right. Let's do some work.