frozen obsession is made possible by... ♪♪ narrator: it's been called terra incognita, the unknown land, a vast maze of islands, inlets, and peninsulas that populate a mostly frozen sea. it is largely treeless, its ground mostly frozen,

and during its sunless winters becomes one of the coldest places on the planet. this polar region at the top of the earth is known today as the arctic. its vast, unspoiled environment is inhabited by unique wildlife, adapted to the extreme conditions that rely on ice to survive. [splash] to western nations the arctic was one of the globe's few remaining blank spaces, the last great un-navigated, unmapped frontiers, isolated and protected by its ice. ♪♪ [bird screeches] [beating of wings]

now, a warming climate is profoundly changing this frozen world. [ominous music] [upbeat music] in the summer of 2019 the northwest passage project ventures into the canadian arctic archipelago on an 18-day expedition aboard the swedish icebreaking research vessel oden. for centuries sailors were obsessed with finding a path across the mostly frozen arctic. now, scientists are racing to understand a melting arctic, and how these changes will affect us all.

♪♪ the northwest passage project was born at the university of rhode island, graduate school of oceanography by a team led by principal investigator and project director, gail scowcroft. the project's novel approach to ocean science research and communication is to include a diverse group of 28 undergraduate and graduate science majors from around the united states who will work alongside scientists. the expedition team gathers in newburgh, new york for a final briefing. gail scowcroft: this is a historic cruise that will hopefully provide very important pieces of the climate change puzzle to the world. you all deserve a round of applause.

[applause] narrator: having few roads or airports, the arctic is not easy to reach. an air national guard cargo plane transports the team, along with thousands of pounds of science instruments, from newburgh to thule, greenland. for the students, selected from a large, competitive group of candidates, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. francis crable: i'm in chicago right, so we don't have an ocean or anything and i wanted to do marine biology research. this is like, huge. you know, nobody gets to do this and go on a research expedition as an undergrad. krystian kopka: getting accepted was probably one of the best days of my life. i just started checking my emails like every hour. all of a sudden, congratulations you got accepted, and it was surreal.

[hum of equipment] rose santana: it's really just completely out of my comfort zone. wow, like how did i get here? you know, this little girl who once wanted to study marine science, you know, from florida, is now in the arctic. kevin montenegro: this place is changing more than any other place in the world due to climate change. we need more effort going into the arctic and understanding what's actually happening here, the dynamics of climate change. narrator: in thule they board the swedish icebreaker oden. two of the participants are inuit young professionals who live in the arctic region called nunavut. none of the other students have been to the arctic and no one has been on a research vessel before. mia otokiak: growing up in nunavut you hear so many stories about the northwest passage.

for me to be able sail the northwest passage is amazing, this is just beyond words for me. ♪♪ narrator: the 350-foot oden's icebreaking abilities make her one of the worlds' most capable polar research vessels. from thule, greenland the ship heads west across baffin bay towards lancaster sound, and into the waterway that traverses the canadian arctic, called the northwest passage. brice loose from the university of rhode island graduate school of oceanography is the chief scientist. he's a veteran of several arctic research trips,

but never with so many students. brice loose: we have entered into this era called the new arctic. that's what we refer, refer to it as, and the ice cover retreats for much longer of the year and ice cover is often much thinner and so we can venture in, we can stay longer, we can conduct more detailed examinations. we're here with- with these multi-faceted goals in mind. so we have groups studying chemistry, we have groups studying microbiology, we have groups focused on birds and mammals, and we have groups focusing on the physical oceanography. so we have the opportunity here to come in and characterize this area, which has gone through quite a tremendous change in the last 5 to 10 years. we can start to highlight the changes that may be taking place. [talking in background] all of that will keep us going seven days a week, 24-hours a day for this entire 18-day cruise, so that we can make the most of every single moment

that the ship provides us. narrator: holly morin, also from the uri graduate school of oceanography is a marine mammal scientist. she is the expedition coordinator for the students and will be hosting live satellite broadcasts from the ship to museums in the u.s. holly morin: i am charged with managing all the students, making sure that they know what they need to be doing, that they're all safe, that they're all feeling well. they're getting rest. t that theesearch is being able to be conducted and coordinated as necessary. that the broadcasts are happening. that the students are doing their blogs. all those different activities i'm keeping track of. "we'll eventually be leaving the boat..." narrator: much will be expected of them. beyond a rigorous, around-the-clock research schedule, the students will be participating in dozens of live broadcasts. morin: they're all amazing. i feel very blessed to be with this group of students that are all motivated, so aware of their environment

and the changes that are happening. a typical day for the student, they may have been up the night before, until midnight, or they could have been waking up at midnight, that's when the shifts change, to pick up where the other team left off. if they are off then they can sleep, they can rest, work on their journals. i nt to make sure that they're getting the most out of this expedition that they're learning, that that excitement they have in that first day is not wang. gibson porter: i always dreamt about going through the northwest passage as a little boy. here i am now, it makes me very happy. my great grandfather was a sailor. he'd gone through the northwest passage. i want to follow his footprints. these waters are very important to us because we hunt a lot of the marine mammals. in our community we're very concerned that in a couple of years there's gonna be a lot of ships coming through here and we're scared that we'll have

a lot of oil spills and it's going to ruin our marine mammals. francis crable: we think about climate change all the time, our generation, definitely me and my friends back home or even all of us here on the ship, we feel like it's something our generation s to solve. we wish people would listen to us more about it. narrator: ed struzik's been thinking and writing about climate issues for decades. a canadian author, lecturer, and journalist with over 40 years of experience reporting on the arctic, ed's recent book, future arctic, details the many changes he has witnessed here. ♪♪ ed struzik: "i'm hoping that this is going to give you a bit of perspective about what you're doing here. now that the arctic is warming what's happening? well, you know the story. sea ice is melting, glaciers are thinning, sea levels are rising..."

the old arctic as we, as i knew it 40 years ago is disappearing very quickly and the new arctic is emerging. you know we're seeing sea ice retreating and glaciers melting. permafrost thawing. we're seeing some communities like tuktoyaktuk, shishmaref you know literally falling into the sea. i'm absolutely astonished by that. climate change is really the main factor. you know temperatures have risen here twice as fast as they have in any other place in the world. the melting of the glaciers is a monumental problem. all that ice that we have on the greenland icecap is going to raise sea water levels by you know not inches but by feet and yards. that's going to impact low lying coastal communities in the western arctic right into siberia. but it's also going to affect you know places like

miami, louisiana. look at new orleans. so this is a global problem. brice loose: when you're on a vessel that costs roughly $7,000 an hour to operate, [water dribbling] $170,000 a day, you try to take advantage of every single moment that exists. so we operate the vessel scientifically speaking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so there are no weekends, there are no holidays. [wind whipping] oceanographers have a lot of different tools that they use to observe the ocean, however, probably the ctd rosette package is the one that's the most widely used and is considered kind of like the gold standard. narrator: the ctd, meaning

"conductivity-temperature- depth", measures the physical properties of seawater. this data is key to understanding the physics, chemistry and biology of the water column at various depths. [splash] the critical ctd will be deployed over 50 times throughout the expedition. brice loose: all over the world there are boats using instruments just like this. it's a combination of electronic measurement equipment, basically that instrument down below, it will measure temperature, conductivity, fluorescence. and that is paired with this 24-bottle rosette. each bottle is called a niskin. just as we have 24 bottles we have 24 of these release teeth. when we send it over at the beginning each niskin is opened up so that you can have free passage of water through each bottle. student: i just need help with this one.

thank you. you want to check all the bells? water's over there. loose: the water sampling equipment that we send over the side, it can weigh as much as two tons. they're out there with hard hats like able-bodied seamen. these are all new experiences for them and we just want to make sure they're getting as much out of it as they can. [splash] [grinding] [popping] narrator: water samples from the ctd can identify the amount of glacier ice melt, measure the release of trapped greenhouse gases, and survey the diversity of organisms in the water. loose: what happens is kind of an intricate dance. many people want to have access to this water and there's sort of an order of operation. -you want to go ahead with eleven nobody else has...

mirella shaban: this was the best kind of educational experience it could have been in the sense of there was a lot of independence with it. if plankton haven't already taken 17 you guys can have 17. it was really on you to do things properly and to get questions answered if you needed to. otokiak: so just to be clear for my brain. one station is just going to go down and we're going to get the data, and then the next station we're gonna get the water samples? montenegro: yes and we'll just flip flop between them. loose: -but the bottles still have to be cocked when they open. as the chief scientist it's my responsibility to make sure that we accomplish as much as we can scientifically speaking, but this project is novel in the sense that we have such a large contingent of really, basically, early career, undergraduate researchers. this is their first time doing oceanography. they're just confronted with all these new circumstances that can be quite kind of overwhelming, frankly. the excitement of working with people who are doing this for the first time reminds you of how it was for you

when you did it for the first time, and that's uh, that's really nice. krystian kopka: this is something that i never thought i'd want to do, i just wanted to see if this would interest me, and now i'm pretty sure this is something that i want to do for the rest of my life. -(gasps) no way! i'm a city boy. all i see is skyscrapers every day. and coming out here seeing this isolated area is just peaceful, it's serene, it's tranquil. [wind whipping] -my understanding that we're meeting in the mess hall area. guy: maybe. i told my guys to go take a look at the schedule... narrator: donglai gong is a physical oceanographer from the virginia institute of marine science. he has been studying arctic water circulation and its impact on climate and ecosystems for years. he returns here as often as he can.

donglai gong: going to sea is always an exciting experience, but coming to here with the students and sharing that experience with them is really, really unique. and this location is remarkable. we're doing really good science, the data we're collecting is high quality, and we're hitting the stations that we need to hit so this is um so far it's been a very successful mission. narrator: the ever-changing seascape of arctic ice is stunningly beautiful and mesmerizing to watch. ice was perilous to early sailors who ventured here, but now it is vital to protect our warming planet, and for donglai it's a critical subject for research. ♪♪

gong: how important is ice to our ecosystem? of course it's important to the species and the organisms in the arctic. at the same time, changes in the arctic which will lead to climate and weather pattern changes at lower latitudes will also change their ecosystem. the ice as you can see is, the color is white, and it reflects most of the sunlight coming to the surface. so when that happens the solar energy is not absorbed by earth. it's reflected back to space. however when ice disappears, as you can see in the ocean behind us, it's a deeper blue color, and that darker color absorbs the solar energy and makes the water heat up, and that retains the heat

in the atmosphere and in the ocean. so the warming of the arctic can potentially affect weather in lower latitudes days from now, or next week. the northwest passage, which is part of the canadian arctic archipelago is essentially a connection between two major ocean basins, you have the arctic ocean and the atlantic ocean. the western arctic supplies a large quantity of fresh water flowing through the archipelago into baffin bay, into the atlantic. the reason why that matters that the fresh water tend to be buoyant, stay on top and when it comes out of the arctic in baffin bay it's going to hug the coast right along the coast of canada and, and eventually makes its way down to the u.s. east coast. so to understand the exchange, how much water's moving through, what kind of water, how much heat, how much fresh water, we've got to measure the water properties as well as the circulation

in this region. nicole trenholm: i'm a graduate student, a phd student, co-leading the physical oceanography team here. we're particularly interested in identifying the origin and the circulation of the water masses that are passing through the northwest passage. we are also playing around with robotics and seeing what kind of imagery we can collect in the air and under the water. how is this particular area changing, related to climate change. narrator: a remotely operated vehicle is used to observe the underside of the ice, to assess its condition and age, and determine the presence of algae growing on it. loose: watch your depth change. so you're going to go up. ♪♪

narrator: most of the canadian arctic archipelago we're passing through is part of canada's northern-most territory, called nunavut. [woman singing traditional inuit song] about 65,000 indigenous inuit live here, in one of the world's most remote and sparsely settled regions. [woman singing traditional inuit song] otokiak: inuit are the original arctic researchers. we've been here for thousands of years. we've made observations. morin: our itinerary for the next two days. we'll go to pond inlet, you'll see in the evening tomorrow. they want to know about what we're doing and we want to know about what they're doing. here you go.

otokiak: i'm from cambridge bay, nunavut. we have inuit values, eight inuit values, all summed up into a word, which is- and it would be funny to get you guys to say it. inuit and then the second word is another word, qaujimajatuqangit. "qaujimajatuqangit" [group laughter] alright. alright.. ok. inuit. [in unison] inuit. qau-ji-maja-tu-qang-it. [in unison] qau-ji-maja-tu-qang-it. yeah. otokiak: traditional inuit knowledge and science and research don't have to be two separate things. [whir of blades] we can work together easily, and in a more beneficial way for both sides. [whirring of blades] narrator: few towns in nunavut have docks,

and must be reached by small boat or helicopter. with a population of about 1,600, pond inlet is one of the larger inuit communities. [talking in background] -should've started with the meat first. narrator: alex anaviapik is a lifelong resident of pond inlet. an artist and local youth mentor, she also joins cruise ships as a culture guide. alex anaviapik: even though the north is very wild and just very vast, desolate. but if you look close enough there's beautiful life and that the culture is rich. there's still amazing things to be discovered. [talking in background] it's interesting trying to see the changes that's happening from a local perspective. ever since i was a little kid i've seen glaciers

and everyear i've been seeing them recede. being able to see really odd weather changes, like this fog right here. sometimes it just gets a little too warm, sometimes it gets a little too windy. pond inlet is not known for wind, so, i've noticed changes, but the question is, how can we change it? it's not just the polar bear's home, it's also my home. [inuit elder sings traditional song] [grinding]

narrator: "kudlik" lamps are carved from stone. fueled by whale or seal oil, they were an essential part of inuit life for centuries, to warm igloos, for cooking, and light. -we got one. narrator: today their flames burn mostly to keep the memory of this tradition alive. ernie kadloo: i grew up out on the land, hunter, carver. i've been carving ever since when i was 18 years old. [grinding] this is my job. i love it. [scratching] narrator: keeping traditions and culture is important to the inuit, but it hasn't always been easy. in the 1950's in an effort to extend their sovereignty,

the canadian government relocated inuit families to the extreme high arctic areas of resolute and grise fjord. in resolute bay today, a proud inuk looks northward. hundreds of miles away in grise fjord, an exiled mother and child look to the south, monuments in remembrance of these injustices. they've faced great hardships but have always survived by being one with the land. alex anaviapik: even if the ice did go away we would still adapt, as people. we always adapt. -i love that. [blades whirring]

♪♪ narrator: beneath a sea of broken ice is another important focus of study, the unseen creatures that dwell in the water column and are vulnerable to a changing climate. [percussive music] narrator: graduate student jacob strock co-leads the microbiology team on the expedition. jacob strock: we're studying the microscopic communities. when most people come to a region like this, they might think about the whales or the walrus or bears. all the big things out there, but really these ecosystems

depend on the microscopic members. phytoplankton and micro zooplankton. phytoplankton, although most people may have never seen one before. most of these organisms are microscopic, play an important role, not just in the arctic, but in a global sense. they feed most of the food web. they take up carbon dioxide in the surface waters, at which point they may die, be consumed and by many forms, be transported into the deep ocean. narrator: data on plankton from this region is scarce. so the first goal is to identify what's here. plankton communities are quite sensitive to their environment. so the microbiology team wants to know how they are being affected by warming waters and increased fresh water from ice melt.

strock: the flocam is one of our critical instruments on this trip. if it sees the excitation of pigments in the plankton it will know to take a picture and it will pop up on our computer screen and we can see what types of plankton we're seeing in the water, how abundant they are, and altogether what the communities look like across these very diverse habitats that we've been passing through on our cruise. we're just trying to understand how the arctic is functioning now, let alone how in a changing environment what the future might look like. digilio: so you're going to put them in the bins? strock: we're going to put them in the bins, we're going to put them in our light treatment bags... michael digilio: i can't believe it. i wonder what i did to be able to deserve seeing such beauty and like experiencing all this scientific knowledge. i'm on board with so many smart individuals who are just willing to share all the information they have. it's amazing.

i plan on getting my masters in secondary education. i want to be a high school teacher. it would be important to me to be able to help the next generation. narrator: while there may be less of it, sea ice remains the key to understanding ocean processes in the arctic. [talking in the background] by analyzing sea ice cores, scientists can measure methane, carbon dioxide, plankton, and more. but first you must find a piece of ice large enough to support a helicopter, [blades whirring] which can be a surreal experience for newbies. [blades whirring] otokiak: [laughing] this is crazy, we're in the middle of the ocean. [muffled talking] tristan: wow.