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00:12Okay it's freezing. We are making our way to 9-0-0-0. I'm gonna try to find the
00:23North Pole. Look at that. Look how crazy that is. I don't know how it's okay to let me get
00:31off the
00:32boat and walk on the ocean. Oh geez. At least they'll find my body in a thousand years. Come on.
00:41I'm gonna find it. There is a geographic North Pole but it's a difficult thing to find because
00:52the ice is moving. It felt like I was chasing the North Pole. 97, 97, 98, 95.
01:06So it's 98 there. Hold on. I set out for 100 days and here I am looking for 90 degrees
01:18north.
01:23There it is. The North Pole.
01:33Here I am. Top of the world.
01:45There's not many people who have been from pole to pole. To actually reach the North Pole
01:54the North Pole was a delicious moment of accomplishment. But I knew we weren't finished.
02:06because my final goal wasn't to just get to the pole. It was to dive under it.
02:15What was I thinking when I said yes to that?
02:18.
02:21.
03:10Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, our Odyssey across the globe is coming to an end.
03:26I set out on this journey because my mentor, Dr. Counter, told me that the answers to everything important are
03:35out at the edges of our world.
03:38And man, was he right.
03:41It's been an incredible journey.
03:43We've discovered deadly creatures which could save millions of lives.
03:48That's insane.
03:50We've learned of rivers in the sky.
03:53We recorded a language on the verge of extinction and explored the secret of happiness in a land above the
04:02clouds.
04:03And now, the final leg of our journey.
04:09I am putting my neck on the line for a discovery that could eclipse all of that.
04:15All right.
04:16We're landing.
04:17We're landing.
04:17Let me get myself.
04:18Let's go.
04:25Hey.
04:26Hey.
04:28Allie, how you doing?
04:29Nice to meet you.
04:30How are you?
04:31Let's get in there.
04:32Thank you for coming all the way up here.
04:34I know.
04:34This is fantabulous.
04:36It is a very beautiful place.
04:38You know how to pick locations for sure.
04:40I do.
04:41I'm very, very excited for you because it gets better.
04:44I'm ready.
04:45Let the games begin.
04:46Follow me.
04:47This way.
04:48My name is Allison Fong and I'm an oceanographer and sea ecologist.
04:58So, you know, this moment in history, our planet is facing a very big crisis.
05:07By burning fossil fuels, we created an abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is warming the earth and
05:17causing all sorts of extreme events.
05:23And so, Will and I are embarking on a scientific expedition to the North Pole to see if there's anything
05:29that we can do about it.
05:31There used to be tons of snow covering these mountains.
05:35It doesn't look like there's a lot of snow here now.
05:38That's kind of the problem.
05:39I believe that living under the ice at the North Pole, there are some of the most efficient organisms on
05:47planet Earth at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
05:52If my theories are correct, then this could be a breakthrough for climate change.
05:58All right.
05:59All right, here we go.
06:00Headed north.
06:02Oh, there we go.
06:03The only way to do this kind of work is to dive under that ice and collect samples.
06:17But first, we've got to get there.
06:20There she is.
06:22That's our ride to the top of the earth.
06:24That is a big, giant boat.
06:27She's a big icebreaker.
06:28That's what we need, where we're going.
06:31Yeah, for me, an icebreaker is like, girl, your feet must be tired because you've been running through my mind
06:38all day long.
06:40How's that?
06:40I hope that's a better icebreaker than mine.
06:47The ambition of the entire journey is gigantic.
06:52You know, it was like, wow.
06:55We're on a scientific mission to help save the planet.
07:04And if somebody offered me that script as a movie, I'd be like, come on, man.
07:10Come on, really?
07:11Send that to Matt Damon because he's smart.
07:15Like, Matt's going to have to make that.
07:41Welcome on board.
07:42Nice to meet you.
07:43Welcome in my office, the best office in the world.
07:47Right.
07:47So this is my first time on an icebreaker.
07:51How does it break the ice?
07:53I'm not nervous.
07:54Yes.
07:54I'm not nervous.
07:55I'm just asking, how does the ship break the ice?
07:57We use the weight of the hull, 30,000 tons, and we jump above the ice and we break the
08:06ice
08:07to optimize this route to the North Pole.
08:10All right, so you feel confident that crashing the ship into the ice is going to be successful
08:15and you'll get us to the North Pole.
08:16Yeah, but you know, which is very important is don't take it for granted.
08:20We're entering a different world.
08:23Only ice and weather will decide.
08:27I'm just breaking down this mission, getting a sense of what we're doing.
08:30And so essentially, the captain, you see the captain, that's the captain right there.
08:35You see, oh, right there.
08:36He's just going to slam the boat on purpose into the ice for a week until we get to the
08:42North Pole and he's pretty sure that the boat will be fine.
08:45And Ali thinks it's a good idea for us to get out of the boat and scuba dive under the
08:51North Pole.
08:53Between the three of us, one of us has made a really bad life decision, and I'm not sure
09:02which one of us it is.
09:05Welcome on board.
09:06My name is Eli.
09:08Eli.
09:08Yeah.
09:09I want to learn my way around the boat, so.
09:12All right.
09:15Here we have which deck we're on and which main vertical zone.
09:18Okay.
09:18Some of these zones can be locked away if there's water intrusion or something like
09:22that.
09:22Oh, water intrusion.
09:24That's like when you're on a plane and they say, in case of a water landing.
09:28Yeah.
09:28It's like, Joker, there ain't no water landing.
09:30That means you crashed.
09:33What do these things mean?
09:35What are all it is?
09:36So it's basically the documents for abandoning.
09:39Everything on the walls is about the damn boat crash.
09:42I know.
09:43Damn, where is the fun stuff on the damn boat?
09:48Okay.
09:49So I've been to the South Pole.
09:51I've been to Ecuador.
09:53I fought anaconda.
09:55And now I'm about to explore the dessert tray.
09:59Now, this is how exploration is supposed to be.
10:03I was telling them from the beginning.
10:05I was saying, this is how we're supposed to be doing it.
10:07I'm going to see if that's strawberry or raspberry.
10:10That's what I need to know.
10:11This is going to be the first part of my expedition.
10:27This is your captain speaking from the bridge.
10:32We are just arriving at the edge of the sea ice.
10:48We, uh, we ran out of ocean.
11:03That was a big one.
11:07To watch the ship break the ice, it's not little ice.
11:13It's from the size of a car to giant apartment-sized pieces of ice.
11:22That is so thick.
11:25It's really, really loud.
11:29And it's rocking the ship.
11:41Seeing the ice made it more real for me.
11:46It made me realize just how crazy this expedition really is.
11:53Diving under ice is new for Will, but it's also new for me.
11:59I dove in warmer waters, temperate waters that are cold, but never this cold, and certainly not frozen.
12:08Growing up in Rhode Island, we have tons of coastline.
12:11So, the ocean was just a natural place for me to be.
12:16I love understanding how things work.
12:19And so, science was a way of taking my natural curiosity and investigating the world around me.
12:26When I told my parents I was going to be a scientist and not a medical doctor, they're like, why
12:29would you do that?
12:30I was like, there's something beautiful and amazing and awe-inspiring in the power of science.
12:37And so, I thought to myself, what can I do?
12:39Where is it that I can really make a difference?
12:44And it's microbes.
12:46Because microbes are the unsung heroes of our planet.
12:49They're what makes this planet unique in our universe.
12:56Okay, all right.
12:58So, you got your little bat cave.
13:00This is where all the, like, real magic happens, actually.
13:03Right?
13:03So, we're in the lab, and I wanted to give you a chance to see what we're actually looking for
13:09under the ice.
13:09Okay.
13:10But first, let's, uh, work on the atmosphere here.
13:13Mm-hmm.
13:14Ooh.
13:14Ooh, okay.
13:19Check this out.
13:21Wow.
13:22This is a single-cell organism called phytoplankton.
13:25Okay.
13:26They're just absolutely incredible.
13:30Oh, phytoplankton, yeah.
13:32Um, I knew everything.
13:34That's, uh, when I was growing up, phytoplankton was all we, we talked about.
13:39We would be on the corner in Philly, and somebody would walk up and say,
13:42yo, man, did you hear about phytoplankton?
13:44And then we would stop basketball games when, when a, uh, new phytoplankton, uh, discovery was made.
13:52It was the, it was the biggest thing when I was growing up.
13:57All right, so take me all the way back to five years old.
14:01Okay, so that is a phytoplankton.
14:05Yep.
14:05So, phytoplankton are tiny little plant-like cells.
14:09Mm-hmm.
14:10Trillions and trillions of them live in the ocean.
14:12They're the reason that this planet is habitable for all the other living organisms that use oxygen.
14:19Wow.
14:23Around 2.4 billion years ago, our planet's climate was transformed by phytoplankton.
14:35Through photosynthesis, they harness the energy of sunlight.
14:41They consume huge amounts of carbon and fill the atmosphere with oxygen.
14:47Making life possible for all of the animal kingdom.
14:58Phytoplankton are like the lungs of the planet.
15:02So, they clean the atmosphere of CO2 and they create oxygen.
15:09Yeah, so that CO2 doesn't get back into the atmosphere, it stays trapped there for thousands of years.
15:16So, we got to get phytoplankton their flowers.
15:18They don't get their flowers.
15:19No, they don't.
15:20It's like the trees get all the props for us being able to breathe.
15:26We know how efficient phytoplankton are at utilizing sunlight for energy.
15:31But in the Arctic, it's dark for half of the year.
15:35So, the big question has always been, what do they do when there is no direct sunlight?
15:40Do they still have the potential to photosynthesize?
15:44This area of research could transform our understanding of climate change.
15:49That's why we need that sample.
15:57This is officially the wildest day of my whole life.
16:03You know, check this out.
16:08That's a daggone polar bear.
16:14That's my first polar bear right there.
16:18I don't know why I'm whispering, because he's a really long way away.
16:22It just seems like you should whisper when you see a polar bear.
16:27For multiple reasons.
16:31Craziness, folks.
16:51As we got to the North Pole, you know, the excitement of that was very short-lived.
16:59I was very insecure about the dive.
17:05We're going to stop this ship, and we're going to get off this ship, and then we're going to stand
17:11on a piece of floating ice, and then we're going to scuba dive under the ice.
17:17Yeah.
17:19It's dangerous, because you're going into an environment where maybe five to ten meters of ice are hanging over your
17:26head.
17:27If you run into a problem, you can't just go directly up.
17:30You have to find that hole in the ice to properly resurface.
17:37I generally do well with stress, but I was very concerned that this time I had bitten off more than
17:48I could chew.
17:48Is that a storm in the distance?
17:52Are you worried?
17:53No, no, no.
17:54I'm just trying to keep my eye out, and I just want to be alert.
17:58Alert.
17:58Okay.
17:59Yes.
18:02The idea of coming up and bumping into ice and knowing you can't get out right there if you had
18:11to.
18:15I was really thinking to myself, oh, no, is this the one where it goes wrong?
18:29The weather's terrible now.
18:32Terrible, terrible, terrible.
18:37The whole Dagorne trip coming down to this moment.
18:50Calum, how are you feeling about today?
18:52Optimistic.
18:53Optimistic, okay.
18:54The word was optimistic, but his voice didn't sound good.
19:05Good to go?
19:09Stand by.
19:20Oh, this is terrible.
19:22This is absolutely terrible.
19:28I ain't no professional diver, but this don't seem like dive weather.
19:37Hey, so how many people have you taken out to dive in this kind of weather?
19:41Oh, you know, I'm the first one.
19:43Oh, I'm the first one.
19:46There's no way this is a good idea.
19:49The weather was not good for the dive.
19:53When we got there, you know, it was like a snowstorm rolled in.
20:00This is ridiculous, man.
20:03Can't even see the damn dive site.
20:06The captain, with the weather coming in, said it was a now or never kind of situation.
20:15Uh, the boat is supposed to be leaving.
20:18The captain has given us, uh, one shot.
20:21Then we gotta go, uh, over here.
20:23Oh, jeez, oh, good heavens.
20:26This was the highest fear point for me in the entire journey.
20:35The thing is, Arctic weather can change in, like, a snap.
20:38So 20 minutes from now, it could be bright sun, beautiful, never know.
20:43Or it could be worse.
20:44Or it could be worse.
20:45Or it could be worse.
20:46It could be worse.
20:46Oh, it can always be worse.
20:48Yeah.
20:53This is exceptionally cold water, so I don't want you guys completing this task any longer
20:59than 10 minutes.
21:00If anybody gets any sort of serious leak, the dive is terminated.
21:05Uh-oh.
21:05Come on, you can do it.
21:15That's better.
21:18Diving in general is a risky endeavor.
21:22Diving under ice is inherently more risky.
21:25And in a very remote place, you're really stacking the challenges.
21:31Okay, I'm going.
21:33But this research...
21:35...could change our outlook on the planet.
21:38Go, Nan.
21:41How can you not be all in?
21:46Oh, my goodness.
21:49Freezing.
21:51Cold.
21:58I was legitimately scared.
22:01But I could tell the weather was coming in.
22:03I could tell we were pushing.
22:07I wanted it to be perfect, and I wanted to get the sample.
22:12And I could feel the tension.
22:24Good to go?
22:27Hang on, guys.
22:28I've got a problem.
22:32Okay, let's sit you back down.
22:38Frozen.
22:39See ice in there, see?
22:40Yeah.
22:42Hot water's coming in.
22:45My thing froze.
22:47And it was right before I was about to jump in.
22:51That's how cold it is at the North Pole.
22:57I'm seeing them bubbles.
22:59I'm seeing them bubbles.
23:01I'm not supposed to be down there.
23:08I'm getting cold.
23:11At this point, Will's taking more time than anticipated.
23:17But because we're a team, we're on standby until all of the divers are safely in the water.
23:23They're going to need more hot water, guys.
23:26Time is ticking.
23:27Time is ticking away before I can actually do what I've come to do.
23:32Let's try it again.
23:42Come on, Will.
23:44Come on, Will.
23:47Three, two, one, go.
24:04Wow.
24:12Look at that, see?
24:15I could see under the ice sheet.
24:21And it was like an upside-down ice mountain range.
24:28And the sun was coming through and all of that.
24:31It was just stunning.
24:34It was definitely those once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience.
24:41Alley, CWS.
24:43Holy s***, this is amazing.
24:46It was incredible.
24:47It was absolutely incredible.
24:50It was like going through a crystal castle.
24:53All of the ice crystals are reflecting the light that's shining in on you.
24:58It was literally incredible.
25:01Let's go towards the areas that look greenish along the bottom of this ice.
25:07Show me the way.
25:10The dive was going well.
25:12I see the target samples that I want.
25:17And all we need to do is swim two-and-a-half meters and slurp a sample.
25:31No.
25:32My valve.
25:36No.
25:44Okay, we've got a problem.
25:52My face mask went into free flow.
25:58I started hearing, abort, dive, abort, dive.
26:04And that's not what you want to hear.
26:08This is it.
26:09I have to surface.
26:12Break the ice.
26:13Break the ice.
26:24There we go.
26:25There we go.
26:26There we go.
26:27Wow.
26:36There we go.
26:51It's not.
26:53It's not.
26:57There we go.
27:02There we go.
27:05I'm going to go.
27:06And that's the hardest part about this, we have no samples.
27:17So it would have taken waiting at least until the next day to try again, and the weather
27:23was still relatively poor.
27:26We weren't going to be able to convince the captain to stay another day.
27:31So it was gut-wrenching when I actually felt the ship move.
27:37It was the realization that the opportunity was gone, really gone.
27:48So we missed the sample.
27:52Yeah.
27:54Well, that sucks.
27:56Yeah, I guess that's putting it pretty lightly.
27:58And the hardest part about, I think, this is that when you're so close, and I mean, we
28:06were like, you know, you could feel it.
28:08Yeah.
28:08Like, we were there.
28:09It was in our grasp.
28:13For me, to miss out on this is just, there's just a lot of feelings that I have about it.
28:20Yeah.
28:21To come all the way to the North Pole and miss.
28:27Yeah.
28:28I can see, you know, how heartbreaking this thing is.
28:33Yeah.
28:33Yeah.
28:34It's like, yeah, it just, it feel, it feels like I slowed you down.
28:42For me, it feels like being in the way.
28:45You know.
28:49You know, there are a lot of moving parts.
28:51Mm-hmm.
28:51And when we got out of the water, and I was thinking about what it is that went wrong,
28:58and what part of the process could have been better, and could I have been better?
29:08But it's not your fault, you know, it's not any single person's fault for having not brought
29:15their very best to the work.
29:18Sometimes you fail.
29:19Mm-hmm.
29:20There's probably people all over the place who have failed somehow and doing something.
29:25Just not as big as us.
29:27That might be, that also might be true.
29:30So, uh, it's a pretty, it's a pretty significant fail.
29:34Uh-huh-huh-huh.
29:38Seeing Ali's disappointment in missing the, the sample, I realized Ali had missed a part
29:48of her life's work, something that she may never have another opportunity to pursue.
29:54That's where it really started to, uh, feel bad.
30:16The second day, I'm sitting in my room, feeling horrible, and someone is communicating via
30:22the radio that we've been called by the captain.
30:27There's a good weather window.
30:29And so there's the opportunity to get back in the water under some ice.
30:33We've moved significantly further south, but it's still in the high arctic.
30:40I'm definitely used to being the guy that takes the shot at the, at the buzzer.
30:46But we're on an expedition that has a mission.
30:52And with a more experienced dive buddy, Ali's got a better chance to bring her discoveries
30:58back home.
30:58So, I'm going to step aside.
31:04Stepping in, in three, two, one, Ali.
31:17And we're there.
31:20And it's, again, incredible.
31:25My dive buddy and I work quickly to collect material off the bottom of the ice.
31:32That's the moment where all of the hope turns into reality.
31:41We collected samples, we collected really, really good samples.
31:51Welcome back to the lab.
31:53Let's see what we got.
31:54See what you got.
31:55See what you got.
31:55So, I wanted to give you a chance to see some of the things that we found when we were
32:00out
32:00there.
32:00You ready?
32:01Yes, I'm very, very ready.
32:03I'm excited.
32:04This is, this is the, the, uh, the part that I, I most enjoy.
32:08You most enjoy.
32:08I most enjoy.
32:09Is it because it's warm and not cold and not freezing and snowing in your nose?
32:14Yeah.
32:15Me too.
32:17Let me show you.
32:18Yeah.
32:20There.
32:21We put part of the sample that we collected in these bottles.
32:24Yeah.
32:25And these bottles are gas-tight.
32:26And we've been keeping them in an incubator that has a control setting for temperature and
32:31light, right?
32:33So it's cold and it's low light.
32:34Oh.
32:34And we've been measuring all of the oxygen and CO2 that they've been using and creating.
32:40And if you look at the top.
32:42Yeah.
32:42Do you see those little dots?
32:43Yeah.
32:44So that...
32:44Those are gas bubbles.
32:45Okay.
32:45So that was gas bubbles all created within a sealed environment in the dark.
32:52That's right.
32:55This experiment shows that Arctic phytoplankton are incredible.
33:01They produce oxygen while consuming carbon at imperceptibly low-light levels.
33:08So you can imagine, like, when people are designing and thinking about how do we, like, create cooler
33:13technology that might slow down climate change, they're looking at how you can create power out
33:18of things like CO2 and sunshine.
33:21Yeah.
33:21That's spectacular.
33:24These polar phytoplankton are some of the most light-sensitive cells we've ever seen.
33:30If we can figure out how to harness their potential, it could revolutionize the future of green energy.
33:38But not only that, it could also help reverse climate change.
33:42Because they not only generate power, they do it by consuming CO2.
33:49But this single entity has all of the power to create an Earth that is habitable for all
33:57of us.
33:57Yeah.
33:57You have no idea that all of that is going on in a drop of seawater.
34:02It's a whole universe.
34:03A whole universe.
34:04Yeah.
34:05It's a whole universe of microscopic life.
34:13It blows my mind that just a single drop of water could open up an astonishing new frontier
34:23for the future of our planet.
34:27I guess my mentor, Dr. Counter, was right.
34:30The answers to everything important are at the edges of our world.
34:40And the point of all of our exploring is to return to the place where we started and
34:47know that place for the first time.
34:55And the point of all of our world is to return to the future of our planet.
35:07Traveling pole to pole has not only changed the way I see our planet, it's changed the way
35:14I see myself.
35:16I've been inspired by the truly extraordinary people I've met.
35:23To ask burning questions about our place on Earth.
35:29Questions about our health, happiness, history, even our ultimate survival.
35:52I've been to the edges of our world, but coming home, it feels like my journey is just beginning.
36:00Because I'm even more curious now than when I first began.
36:04And that is a beautiful thing.
36:07And that is a beautiful thing.
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