. >> andy mahoney is a geophysicist at the university of alaska, fairbanks.e's been studying polar sea ice for 15 years. >> regardless of whether those changes are positive or negative for some people, rapid change is always an alarming thing to see. >> there's much more science to be done - luckily here - the days are really long. >> the sun just is not gonna to set. we're that far north up here in the arctic. >> coming up the techknow teams heads north, and straight into this... when techknow's journey to the arctic returns. >> july 10th, 2015 - we've been in the arctic for two days and still no sign of ice. meanwhile, i'm learning my way around the coast guard cutter healy - sort of. of course the crew make getting around even the tightest spaces look easy. but on the third morning - this happened. >> last night when i went to bed it was open oceans, this morning when i woke up - it looks like this. >> we're in the chukchi sea north of the 71st parallel - and the healy is breaking ice. >> how does that actually work? >> well we're 16,000 tons and we can ge

andy mahoney is an ice researcher at the university of alaska, fairbanks. he says industry field research shows oil can get into ice. >> what we do know from limited field experiments, mostly in norway, and even more limited field experiments in ice tanks and cold labs, that the oil will make its way into the ice. ice will be somewhat like a sponge, and so you'll have a mix of oil covered ocean, oil covered ice and oil impregnated ice. >> jip researchers suggest that oil impregnated ice can also be an advantage when it comes to cleanup. >> while it may limit our access to it, it also limits the access of that oil to marine life and to anything else that might be impacted by the oil. >> but dr. mahoney also studies ice movement. ice floes are constantly drifting and can move hundreds of miles within weeks. >> that's why it's important to understand ice motion. and you can do that with radars like on this ship. >> in 2014 the national academy of sciences released this report on the state of science and technology to respond to an arctic oil spill. the report