Observations at 65° South (2021) - full transcript

That's going to be my domain
for the next four weeks.

To on one meter of privacy,
more or less on the hallway.

In 2017,

I met a small group of scientists

who were preparing an expedition
of an unusual kind

to the most southern tip of the world,
Antarctica.

Their mission was funded
by the Belgian government

to commemorate the 120th anniversary

since the first scientific
expedition to the frozen continent.

To find a mockery of the science community,

their journey from the most southern tip
of Argentina,



across the turbulent Drake Passage
to the Antarctic Peninsula,

would be carried out aboard
a 23-meter sail bout.

Small enough to reach entirely
undocumented parts of the Polar Shore,

the ship could just about host
the scientists,

three crew and their gear.

So after two years of training
my new friends with the camera,

I said goodbye to them
and my precious equipment at the pier.

The toughest steps
are not those taken out of necessity,

but those we choose to take
in the name of change.

This is a story of a team
of rebel scientists

operating against the convenience
of airplanes and icebreakers,

against their communities' trust,

and against the odds of the sea.

I don't know if you heard
but the worst part will be tonight.



So it's actually a test of concept, uh,
to try working on this small vessels,

small research platform.

There's several reasons.
The first one is the agility of the ship.

So it's much smaller,

it can access areas which are inaccessible
to other larger vessels,

we can go in shallower areas.

And, uh, the big advantage
we have also apart from agility

is the fact that we have complete control
over the decisions

about what we're doing with the ship.

So the ship is ours.

And we decide what we do with our time.

So our main objective
is collect baseline data.

Uh, baseline data is really important

because in order to measure any change,
you have to have a baseline.

So what we're doing here

is we're collecting
this kind of baseline data

for the next generation of scientists

to measure the impact of global change
and global warming on the area.

We're a group of nine scientists
from four different European countries.

From Italy, from France, Belgium,
and Germany.

And each of us
had a different area of expertise.

First of all, there was myself and Henrik,

we were mainly responsible for fishing.

And then there was Henri.

Henri looked at birds,
but also at crustaceans.

And then we have the diving team.

Diving team consisted of three people,

and they were investigating all the flora
and fauna below the water.

And finally, there was a team
we called the Beach Boys,

uh, consisting of Camille and Quentin,

and they were doing research
along the shore.

So it's kind of
a holistic research approach

to an area of the Antarctic Peninsula

that to date
is almost completely undocumented.

For our campaign,

we are going to dive in many locations
where nobody ever dove before.

- Ready to get into the water?
- Ready.

Getting used to the temperature now.

It's going to be different because
we don't have the whole facilities

of a base where I was used to go,

or a big ship like the Polarstern
or other research vessels.

So I think it will be
the most challenging trip I ever did.

In Antarctic,

you always dive attached
to the lifeline because for instance,

if that iceberg would start to move
towards us,

then we have to abort the dive.

And then we have to have
a way to tell the diver come up.

I studied soft sediment and the organisms
that live within the sediment.

As the soil on Earth,
the sediments in the ocean,

they have a lot of exchange
with the water column.

So they are very important
in the energy cycling

or cycling of the matter.

The Antarctic is very big,
so it's bigger than Russia.

You know, so it's… it's a very big piece
of, uh, continent.

It's a very important ecosystem
in the whole system of the planet.

It produces a lot of deep waters
that are full of oxygen

and full of nutrients
that actually are spread

around other parts of the globe.

And it's very important
in the whole circulation,

let's say blood system are there.

This is my fifth time to Antarctica.

I will never forget the first time
I saw a penguin colony.

I was helping the penguin guys at the time

and we were going to get some samples
for us as well.

And we were going up, getting to the top

and then a whole plane opened
and it was full of it, full,

and I… I cried like it's...
like it was...

like a feeling I couldn't hold
because it was really impressive

to be outnumbered so much by nature

There are so many things happening
in the ship simultaneously.

It feels like a whole town,
like crammed into 23-meters of ship.

There's no space that's left
unused and everything is movable.

You can take the panel from the wall
off the floor,

there's storage space,
electric fuses, pumps, the engine.

It's like a living organism.

And the icebergs that crash
against the hull at night,

that's part of the experience.

We are in the Melchior islands.

And so we are for our part focusing
on the intertidal area,

So the beach shows things,

so we have investigated biodiversity
on that area,

and doing some quadrants experiments

and so just looking
for the general diversity of the area.

That's a fucking big sound.

It's never stopping today.

- Okay, so...
- What just happened?

I just saw ice that break,

like this morning,
it's happening like every, I don't know,

ten minutes or something.

And this morning,
we were so close to…

to one of the stuff so I won't say
we were scared, but yeah,

we paid attention.

So… That one was supposed
to be more stable,

so let's… let's trust in it. Yeah.

- Well done Camille, a little stressed?
- Huh?

A little stressed or are you not?

You trust Camille in these things?

Yes definitely, he's our little McGyver.

He managed perfect.

Well done, Camille.

I... I think it's done now.

Woah, so impressive.

Oh, shit.

We normally have a very simple rule,
which is,

if you see the leopard seal nearby
the place where you're going diving,

you don't dive, if you're divers diving
and you see a leopard seal in vicinity,

you will recall back your diver,

and if you're diving and you see
a leopard seal next to you,

you just keep on looking at
the leopard seal, you gather your things,

and you just go up.

You abort the dive.

Not because they're so extremely dangerous,

but because they are very unpredictable.

They're big.
They can be four or five meters.

They have no hands to touch you
so they might be chewing you a little bit

to understand what you're doing,
who you are, what is that?

It was killed this morning
by a leopard seal.

It's an interesting feeling

to realize that there's a lot of wildlife
just out there.

Every day you see something
that's a lot stronger than you

and just high up the food chain.

That's an interesting feeling.

You realize you're not…

not always as in control
as you might think you are.

How do you feel Camille?

Oh, sorry, what do you want?

- How do you feel?
- How do I feel?

Pretty great.

I just saw a leopard seal eating a penguin.

It was quite impressive.

Um…

That's all for today, France.

Tell me some more.

Some more about?

Some more about what,
what do you want to know?

- I don't know, ship life?
- Uh, ship life. Uh…

That's a very good question today,
thank you.

- Uh…
- Maybe the food.

The food, the food the food is great.

Uh, sometimes the pasta
are a bit overcooked,

but don't tell.

Um, the food is one of the most
important things I think on ship

because it bond's people together

and, uh, when you have good food,
you have good mood usually.

Uh, and so far it's been really great
and we're all eating quite a lot.

And it's, yeah, pretty enjoyable.

All right.

So now we'll open the trap.

But we can see that many of the amphipods
are still trying to get in,

so they're attached to the mesh.

So like… like the krill that has, uh,

like a central position in the food web
in the Antarctic.

Amphipods are very important
because they occupy

many different niche in the ecosystem.

So these ones are important for degrading
all the the dead matters.

This is the head of a fish that we put in

and it's almost perfectly cleaned
to the inside.

And they have an extremely fine sense
of detection for any carcass,

so they can they can detect
that animal from, from hundreds,

maybe hundreds of meters,
maybe kilometers away

and just swarm in.

Having to sacrifice a living
creature for science is never easy,

no matter how big or small they are.

I have been studying amphipods
since the year 2000.

And still we find new species unknown
to science and to mankind.

We have to know about their existence,
where they live,

what they eat, how they behave.

Without this knowledge,

there is no way to measure
our impact on this planet.

The more we know,
the better we can protect.

Want to say anything Katy?

Um, I don't know really,
I'm just sort of feeding everybody.

Everybody seems super happy and hungry
and busy and…

I can't keep up with the cake
and the dessert demands

as we're having Bruno's favorite dessert
this evening, lemon tart.

I've got to make two;
one with meringue and one was not,

because otherwise, Skipper Ben's
gonna be me a bit upset

we're not having meringue.

I've already had quite
a few visitors popping in heads

looking to see what's going on.

As you can see there's a plethora of food.

What are you reading, Bruno?

Um…

"Quince Mois Dans L'Antarctique."

So this is the journal
of the original expedition?

I've had this book for a long time and,
uh, I kept it to read it here.

So I'm discovering it. It's really good.

How do you feel? Do you feel connected?

Well, actually more and more
when I read it. Yeah.

I think there's not a lot of
people internationally or even in Belgium

who are aware that the first purely
scientific expedition to Antarctica

was actually led by Belgium.

The Belgica expedition was led
by Adrien de Gerlache, 120 years ago.

They got trapped actually in the ice
and had to overwinter in the area.

And they drifted quite a long way
along the Antarctic Peninsula

until finally, spring arrived
and they got released.

It was a very successful
scientific expedition.

Actually, they had very good
scientists on board

and the collected a huge amount of samples.

Um, there is a huge amount of literature

that has been published afterwards on,
on this mission.

It must have been an incredible time
for these people.

Because, uh, technology was not there,

they were pretty much the first one
to discover these areas.

So there was so much more unknown
that we have at this moment.

When you look at the composition
of the Belgica team,

they were all selected very carefully
and very interestingly.

And it's not surprising that Amundsen
was there too.

He was only 24 at the time.

And a few years later,
he was the first to reach the South Pole.

Taking the same route along
the Java Straight,

as they took in 1898,

made me think a lot about them
while being on this mission.

How did they feel when they realize
they would spend the winter there?

And how did they pass their time?

The specificity here
apparently compared to Melchior

is that there's going to be tourists
arriving at 5:00 a.m.

Can we ask them to be silent?
Not to wake us up.

Because they're mainly going to bother
the, the intertidal guys.

I suppose because they're going
to go on the beach and then...

- How many people?
- Five hundred.

Five hundred?

One hundred at a time.

So it's kind of a different mindset.

Please not on my quadrat, no no no!

If a tourist steps on your quadrat,
do you sample it?

Yeah, you have to take a sample!

- At least take some muscle tissue.
- We'll chop one up.

Do we know the time
of the tourists or not yet?

The tourist tide?

We wake up, no one is there.

And then suddenly this tour operator voice

gives a rundown for the day and it's like:

Good morning and it's really…

and you just hear it over the water
and you feel a bit like, oh,

did we just sign up for Disneyland
or what like, what is this?

I was surprised actually to see
that all the tourism activity

was very well organized.

And, and there's a lot of rules
that they have to follow

and they have a lot of guides
that go first on the colony,

they set up a path with little, uh,
markers and,

and people who go there are only allowed
to follow this little path.

On one side, you have the penguins

just like walking
and like doing their thing.

And then on the other side,

you have the humans
also just like walking and taking photos.

And it's really... it's a…
it's a funny, um, picture

because I mean, it does feel a bit like,
like a zoo, which is the other way around.

I have sort of mixed feelings
about, uh, this,

there's a, a lot of good communication
between the, uh, tour operators

and the scientific communities.

But still the, the amount of people
that, that came,

means there's an impact,
it's impossible to avoid.

Microplastics even from,

from our clothes, fly away go in the water.

I mean, it's...
It gets into the, the environment.

And the more people you have there,
the more, the more impact you will have.

There were 70,000 tourists
going to Antarctica this year,

which is quite a lot.

We caught one big icefish
of the family Channichthyidae.

Now the fishes see as a huge head.

So it's, uh,

that's why they're called
Dragon icefish's sometimes.

And, um,

the guilds, this here, are white.

In all other fish, except for fish
in Arctica, they will be red.

Because of the hemoglobin
that binds to, uh, oxygen.

These fish, they don't need to hemoglobin,

water here is so cold, so oxygenated,

that they get enough oxygen
just through the skin.

So this is the heart of an ice fish.

It's pretty, uh, you see,
it's still pumping. It's pretty big.

And also, it's brown yellowish, not red.

Like this one.

This is the heart of a red-blooded
ice fish, of a red-blooded

So that has a hemoglobin,

that's why it's a red and this one
is from without hemoglobin.

That's why it's just yellow-brownish.

We're gonna cut open the belly.

We'll see right away that this fish
was suffering a lot,

it may have not faded,
but it has a lot of parasites,

all these are nematode worms
that are inside or top of the liver.

So these fish are very specially
adapted to live in cold habitats.

But now, if the water warms a lot,

it may be that they are not fit
to live under these circumstances.

What makes the polar region so so fragile

and, and so particularly sensitive
to climate change

is that all of these animals are

extremely adapted
to this particular environment.

The slightest change will,
will shift their comfort zone

to a zone where it's not going
to be possible for them to survive.

So from there,
they will have different strategy,

either they can cope with it,

which is quite rare usually when,

when you are very much, um, adapted
to your environment.

Or you can migrate

but then you go somewhere else
where other species exist already.

So there will be competition
or you just die.

Bruno where are we heading?

Uh, we're heading to Metchnikoff Point.

So there's a commemorative plaque there

that was set by a Belgian expedition
in the '80s.

So we're going to check, uh,

if it's still there,
if it's still in good shape,

and take a few pictures for documentation.

We went there on request
of the Belgian government

to actually look at the conditions
of a place

which purpose was to commemorate
the ventures of

It's just rocks, rocks, rocks, rocks, ice,
rocks, rocks, rocks,

where is a monumental here, so we were all

looking with the binocular
hoping to find it.

We said, okay,
the penguins are going up there,

maybe we can go up the same way

because if penguins do it, we can do it,
not exactly the same.

It's slippery.

We arrived at the plate

which was in very good conditions actually.

- Act serious.
- I can't.

But yeah, what eventually
we were surprised to find,

was this abandoned camping sites.

So we are at the…

At the commemorative, uh, plate

to, uh, celebrate the Gerlache.

I don't know what to say.

There's some cans of food still there.

There was a lot of plastic, plastic bags,
plastic vials, syringes,

uh, plastic in many different forms.

There was a lot of lipsticks,
uh, survival matches.

A couple of thermometers full of mercury
that was still used at the time

and the rubbish
is pretty much spread over, uh,

maybe 100-meter square.

It's very difficult to land there.

So nobody could have reported this,

these kind of places are not really
visited by anybody

unless you go with the purpose.

This time, the government asked us to go
so we went.

These are probably remains from
a camp from an expedition in the 1980s.

In hindsight, I think

that this has probably been left behind

because they had to abandon their camp
during bad weather conditions.

They were stationed there for for two,
three years even or so,

and then at some point, they had to leave
and never came back.

What does it say?

It says custard powder.

Might be British. Huh.

I just thought, ha, it's us.

That's what we do,

everywhere, no?

Of course the entire thing
is special and it has to be

kept pristine, but,

somehow what's the difference
from beautiful place in Antarctica

and any other place on this planet?

Everything was as beautiful
as Antarctica before.

Barely anything is untouched
from human pollution and exploitation.

And Antarctica is no exception.

And not only with this example,

wherever you put a trawl
in the water for scientific purposes,

you catch plastic.

So we cleaned up a little bit,
but there's so much, it would take,

yeah, a couple of days to clean.

That we won't have time to.

Uh, but hopefully we can, uh,
raise a little bit of awareness

about who gets out because then maybe
they can come

that would be great.

The only place we're in boldface off.

The only places here that I know
that no one else goes to,

I've never even seen anyone at Green Reef,

not not another single boat ever.

I'm the only one that I've known
that's ever gone in.

But there are a lot of boats
that go up and down...

There are a lot of boats that go up
and down that channel.

I've been traveling to Antarctica
since 1997.

It was my first, first trip
and I've been hooked ever since.

It's the place I feel most comfortable
in the world,

not, not where I was born
or where I grew up or where I live now.

Like my home now,

but it's here is where I just feel
most comfortable on Earth.

For me, it's definitely
a highlight of my career

even out of, you know, without question,

this voyage is a seed that was planted
four or five years ago.

I feel like it's Barrow
that I've been pushing

within the Antarctic science community
for a long time.

Because I could see this, I had...
I could see this vision

of exactly this happening
and now, it is happening, so it's,

it's like a dream come true for me.

People say to me all the time,
you know, once you've seen it,

why do you keep going back to Antarctica,
isn't it just all

you know, snow and penguins.

I said, well of course it's not,

once you look deeper,
once you start to spend time there,

month after month after month,
you start to see colors change,

you start to see the reds,

you start to see the copper
in the mountains.

You keep putting up with bad weather
and being away from family and friends

and loved ones to do that,

to experience that.

- How's it going?
- Good. Good.

It's frustrating
that we didn't catch any fish.

We trying a lot today, but I don't know,

fish seem not to be here.

Maybe in the we serve that out,

we gonna put it in after dinner, I think,

and then we see.

Thank you.

Merci.

Grazie.

Danke.

Gracias.

You shaved your head again?

- He's anal about his head.
- Can you not see...

- It's hydrodynamics.
- …Cue ball shine to the top of it.

It's so I can make sure the boat travels
as fast as possible at all times.

Did you do your sideburns as well a little?

You got levels.

I'm not meant to have another one.
I can't see what I'm doing in the steam.

Ca suffit!

Knees, eyes, throat!

Does everyone have everything they require?

Water

Some red water maybe.

I can get you some red water.

Right now, it's a bit difficult,
I think it's getting too dark.

So, the fish also have difficulties
finding our lure.

Maybe once with bait if we given some time,

we would see.

So, this morning at six,

we have been woken up by an iceberg
that actually bumped into the boat.

So, what happens here is that we
are just anchored in front of a glacier.

And this glacier is very active.

So what happens is that at night,
it breaks off

because let's say relatively
warm temperatures during the day

and cracks form
where the water goes through

and then in the night it freezes
and it gives, it expands,

and therefore it generates
a break in the ice.

And so, in the morning, we actually have
a lot of accumulation of ice over there

which then because of the tide,

therefore, the low tide
is going to bring it towards the outside,

it actually moves along the boat.

So, this morning, we have two dives planned

and one in the afternoon,
I will have to evaluate the safety now

for the diving of this morning
and we might have to wait for the ice

to actually leave our surroundings
and…

Yeah, that was one.

- How cold is the water?
- Minus one or a bit less maybe.

I am doing models.

The main aim is to produce relevance.

Uh, species distribution models,
and physiological models

applied on benthic species like

and so on.

In different areas,
species cannot have different metabolisms

and with climate change,
we can choose as well.

Before producing models
to predict in the future,

we need to produce a good model
for presence.

And you can see if a species will die
because she has not enough resources

to leave or if temperature is too high
or too little.

I always had the dream to actually go
and dive in Antarctic,

and I dove.

And then I saw this amazing biodiversity
it's fantasy, you know.

I think we are waking up to this call
and I know that we are waking up.

The thing is that you may wake up
and still be too sleepy

to make it on time to work.

Or you may wake up and figure out
that you need to jump out of the bed

and start running to get on time to work.

So that's what I think it's the moment
of our species, now we,

we are waking up but now we need
to stand up and start running

because, yeah,
the planet is giving a lot of signs

that we need to take care of it

if we want to survive the way
we are hoping to thrive.

Antarctica is conceived
as this very remote place,

and in geographical terms, it is remote.

It's very challenging, even dangerous
to do research here.

But we do need to keep in mind
that our actions at home

affect what happens here

and eventually these consequences
come back around.

Swift.

What are you doing, Bruno?

Uh, cleaning, getting ready
for the Drake, backing everything up.

To do, to do.

- Everything is done?
- No.

- Boots and jackets away?
- No.

Is there space in the freezer?

- In this one?
- Just for one of these two. Yeah.

Yeah, it should fit.

Physical samples that we have
in our freezer

is a little bit under 2000's.

And much more if you count
all the other observations

we made on top of those like observing
the birds, whales,

all those things we could
not actually physically sample.

Our expedition was quite short,

it was like 22 days effective in the field.

Under certain years comparable
to what other expeditions

with large vessels are bringing back
in terms of efficiency.

For those players that we surveyed,

we have a good idea of what is really there

and that can be compared in the future.

And I think that's the biggest
and the most important result

that we can bring to the scientific world

and to the human communities
for conservation.

How does the story end
that is told at the point of departure,

at the start of friendship,
the beginning of a race,

the first step towards
the shift in approach.

The end of this journey
is just the beginning of another,

a much harder and much longer one.

I'm glad to have met this group
of scientists who can lead the way.

Now what's left to do is to get up and run
with them.