NOVA

People have been visiting Antarctica for over a century. Today, living in Antarctica is a bit different.  Eclectic bands of scientists and support personnel are drawn to the continent and, every year, a crew makes their home on “the ice.” Will hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez be able to discover what it is about this icy, seemingly inhospitable place that makes it so alluring?

Arlo and Caitlin meet the people who find themselves in Antarctica year after year.

What is it Like to Live in Antarctica?

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People have been visiting Antarctica for over a century—and hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez can actually see what living there used to be like, because some of the early explorers left all their stuff! One of the earliest expeditions was that of Robert Falcon Scott, from 1910-1913, more commonly known as the Terra Nova Expedition. (No, they didn’t name it after this YouTube Channel.) Its “home-base” hut is still intact: desiccated penguin, seal blubber, science experiments, and all.Today, living in Antarctica is a bit different. But still, an eclectic band of scientists and support personnel are drawn to the continent and, every year, a crew makes their home on “the ice.” Starting at the U.S. Antarctic Program’s McMurdo Station and then while exploring Antarctica’s natural wonders—glaciers, a volcano, Weddell seals, and even weird fish—Arlo and Caitlin meet the people who find themselves in Antarctica year after year.But will they be able to discover what it is about this icy, seemingly inhospitable place that’s so alluring to geologists, astrobiologists, and waste managers alike?

Antarctica is cold, windy, isolated, barren, and often downright dangerous. Yet somehow, people manage to live there. (Some even enjoy it!)

Episode 4: Antarctica is cold, windy, isolated, barren, and often downright dangerous. Yet somehow, people manage to live there. (Some even enjoy it!)

Planet Earth

The AntarcticansPublished: February 26, 2020Caitlin Saks: I’m sorry—is this real?Michael Jackson: Yeah, that’s real. It’s a dessicated penguin... that’s a 100 year old penguin, yeah. Dead penguin.Caitlin: That’s disgusting. And you guys left this in your museum?Michael Jackson: [Laughs] We don’t judge.Caitlin: Some of the earliest antarctic explorers lived here between 1911 and 1917.Michael Jackson: Things are pretty much as intact as when they left. It’s kind of hallowed ground for explorers. You see how fast they departed and how they left everything behind.Caitlin: This was the true age of exploration.Arlo Pérez: Robert Falcon Scott aimed to be the first to reach the South Pole… and his team made this hut their home base.Michael Jackson: They were very much interested in science as well as exploration.They had all kinds of experiments here: meteorological, biological, and geological observations.Caitlin: Scott actually made it, but a Norwegian beat him there, and then he froze to death on the way back.Arlo: Living here was pretty rough.Caitlin: Seal blubber! Gross…Arlo: And in some ways, it still is.Caitlin: But, despite its hostility, people are still drawn to this desolate continent, today. What is living here like, now? Who comes here? And why?Caitlin: Alright, fresh bagels, guys!Arlo: While living in Antarctica for a month, we experienced basically two very different lifestyles.Arlo: I set this up all by myself.Arlo: One in the remote field camps...Arlo: I’m pretty proud.Arlo: The other in what residents affectionately call “The Town”—McMurdo Station.Caitlin: This 105-building stationwas established in the 50s… and today houses around 900 people in summer!Arlo: And it’s got just about everything: Dorms, offices, a hospital, fire station, waste treatment plant, weather office, vehicle maintenance shop and 24/7 pizza.Caitlin: If you’re going to get a slice of pizza 20 minutes before dinner time, I’m at least going to shame you about it…Caitlin: And it’s all here to support science. Stuff like research on penguins, seals, volcanoes, climate science, weird looking glaciers… even fish.Caitlin: McMurdo provides logistical support for science across Western Antarctica and the South Pole.Caitlin: But most people in this town, aren’t scientists.James VanMatre: Oh man, this is the best place in the world to be a trashman! No flies, no rats, nothing rots. You know, it's frozen, doesn't even really stink.Arlo: They are the people who handle the trash, they’re the cooks, the mechanics…David White: Without us, without support people, there would be no science. You need this big population of seven hundred to a thousand people to support maybe 300 scientists because you've got to get them more they need to go, you've got to get their equipment, their food, their water and so forth.Caitlin: They’re essential for the science to happen. But a lot of them never even get to leave the station... which looks and feels sort of like an aging mining town. So, it’s hard to see on the surface what’s so appealing about this place.David White: People either come down their first season and say That's it." It's a bucket list thing and then they never come back and there's others that just come back year after year after year. It’s either just out of curiosity, or adventure, or they just get into the community and stay with the community. I never thought I'd be doing this. I left a pretty good job to come down here. So, you know… And I stayed. I keep coming back.Caitlin: What was your previous job?David White: I worked on a space shuttle. Kennedy Space Center, Florida.Caitlin: No kidding! Space shuttle to snow mobiles?David White: Yeah, I know it’s kinda…Caitlin: That’s really…You must really like it down here.Arlo: In a way, McMurdo kind of operates like a college campus… all of your basic needs—like meals and housing—are taken care of.James VanMatre: You can do more with your social time here than anywhere else in the world because you're not buying groceries, you're not buying gas, you’re not paying bills. I see more live music here than I do almost anywhere else, and then I get to eat 3 meals a day with eight of my close friends, you know?Arlo: In the few weeks we spent here, we found that the bottom of the world is actually a pretty social place.Person at lunch table: There’s a lot of people who come here to escape people. It’s not that great of a place to escape people honestly.Caitlin: And it turns out, on a continent where there is no cell phone service… you get to know people on a whole different level.Caitlin: Arlo, who was your teenage crush?Arlo: Hilary Duff[Laughter]Person at lunch table: Oh!Caitlin: A Baby!Person at lunch table: It’s okay!Caitlin: While McMurdo station may be the social and logistical hub of Antarctica, the science it supports can happen in much more remote and isolated environments.Krista Myers: Probably the first thing you’ll notice once the helicopter goes away is how quiet it is. It’s like absolutely just super quiet out there. You really are out there with just your team.Caitlin: This is where we encountered the second Antarctican lifestyle.Arlo: Out in remote field camps, you often live in a tent, cook your own food, even poop in a bucket and bring it back to town.Krista Myers: You will be pretty amazed at how gusty it can get out there. Yeah, you’ve got to keep your wits about you. You can’t put anything down on the ground without expecting it to blow away at any moment.Arlo: On the ice, you have to watch out for deadly hidden cracks. And of course, it’s freezing cold and windy.Britney Schmidt: It's a strange environment to want to go and spend months away from everyone you know and everything you know in the pursuit of something.Caitlin: In addition to completing their work—whether that be scientific research or logistical support for that research—the teams have to… well, survive. and the environment makes everything exponentially harder.Britney Schmidt: Nothing ever works exactly how you want it to. And so there's all these different challenges, the technology for us is always a challenge. We had a software glitch... we actually really don't know what happened. So things like that.Peter Doran: Working here is like going up the down escalator. You have to push a little bit harder or else it’s just gonna push you back down again. And so, things are breaking all the time. It’s cold so things snap. Things freeze up. You have to make that extra push in order to make things work.Peter Doran: Time to get serious.[Laughter]Arlo: There we go.Jill Mikucki: But why do science unless you absolutely love what you're studying? I mean it's so consuming sometimes. I think you have to be really passionate and really enjoy it because this is grueling sometimes, this is really grueling. So I think you have to have the love…Caitlin: But, despite the challenges—or perhaps because of them—comes an addictive sense of satisfaction.Peter Doran: But I always tell people it becomes more and more like work all the time.Peter Doran: And that's just a joke. It's not true.Krista Myers: Ha ha ha.Caitlin: I don’t get it.Peter Doran: It's...it's not more and more work all the time. I still enjoy it. I actually enjoy bringing new people down. You know, and then you see how they react, right?Caitlin: We came to Antarctica to report on the research being conducted down here… but the people we met, were just as fascinating.Peter Doran:There's something about remote research that really appeals to me and I don't know what it is…Britney Schmidt: It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, in the most beautiful place I could imagine.Caitlin: It’s a bit less dangerous than it was for the first explorers. And there’s a lot more support. but this place still has a powerful allure.Britney Schmidt: They say that when you shake the planet all the weird stuff falls to the bottom. I guess I’m one of the weird ones.

Giving birth and raising young is particularly challenging in Antarctica’s extreme conditions, forcing Weddell moms and pups to bear sub-zero temperatures and prevailing winds. How do they manage to do it so gracefully? To find out, Caitlin and Arlo travel to a seal colony during pupping season. Footage of seals was obtained under the authority of NMFS MMPA permit nos.1032-1917, 17236, & 21158

Hosts Caitlin and Arlo travel to an Antarctic Weddell seal colony during pupping season.

How Antarctica’s Cutest Baby Seals Grow Up

Inhabiting the Ross Sea—as far south as McMurdo Sound—Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) have the most southerly distribution of any mammal on Earth. Scientists began studying a breeding population of Weddell seals in 1968 and quickly found out these pinnipeds don’t always have it easy. Giving birth and raising young is particularly challenging in Antarctica’s extreme conditions, forcing Weddell moms and pups to bear sub-zero temperatures and prevailing winds. How do they manage to do it so gracefully? (OK: they’re admittedly way more graceful in the water than on land.) To find out, NOVA hosts Caitlin and Arlo travel to an Antarctic Weddell seal colony during pupping season. Once there, they meet with seal biologist Jay Rotella—and the downright adorable newborn seals he studies.

Penguin lovers, take note: Baby Weddell seals might actually be cutest animals in all of Antarctica (and we’re talking a continent the size of the United States and Mexico combined).

Episode 2: Penguin lovers, take note: Baby Weddell seals might actually be cutest animals in all of Antarctica (and we’re talking a continent the size of the United States and Mexico combined).

How Antarctica’s Cutest Baby Seals Grow UpPublished: February 5, 2020Caitlin Saks: It seems like everyone has an idea of what Antarctica looks like.Arlo Pérez: For us it was this endless landscape of white, as far as the eye could see.Caitlin: But when we got here, we were greeted with something different. A wild and varied terrain.Arlo: One its most striking features is its sea ice.Caitlin: It’s also one of the most dangerous—covered in cracks that open straight to the freezing water below.Arlo: But if you take a closer look at these cracks you might be rewarded with the sight of a creature that has made them their home.Caitlin: This is what we've been waiting for. This is what we've been training for all week long. We’re finally going to go out on the sea ice and meet with a scientist who is studying seals out there.Radio: Yankee six-zero-one stand by.Caitlin: That means don’t say anything right?Arlo: Whenever someone falls over into a crack, they actually name the crack after them. If I could have a crack named after me, that would be great. You know you'd be like “Crack Arlo.” Or “Arlo's Crack.” Which kinda has a different ring to it.Caitlin: Jay Rotella and his team are researching seal families – a study that’s been going on for just over 50years.Caitlin: Is it trying to find milk right now?Jay Rotella: Yeah, so the two nipples are back toward us, and he or she may find them.Caitlin: You can do it buddy, you’re close.Jay Rotella: That baby was 66 pounds on average that's pretty typical. And it will be two hundred and fifty pounds or so 220 pounds within a month.Caitlin: Oh my gosh!Jay Rotella: So they'll go from about the size of a second grader, to an NFL football player in 30 days.Caitlin: My friend Arlo wants to have a crack named after him. But you have to fall into a crack to do that. So what do you think about a seal, can we have a seal named after him? Can we name him Arlo?Jay Rotella: We just have to find a boy seal and youcan name it Arlo, that's fine.Caitlin: Is that a boy seal?Jay Rotella: Well we can check.Jay Rotella: Arlo’s a boy!Caitlin: Arlo’s a boy!Arlo: The seal colony is in the middle of one of the most breathtaking landscapes—where the sea ice flows around an island. Here, pressure builds in the ice, creating these towering icy sculptures, appropriately called pressure ridges.Arlo: Now, what is probably most stunning about these pressure ridges is how similar it actually looks to water. You actually look at it, and you can imagine, like, waves crashing against the surface.Arlo: But they’re not just cool to look at. They’re actually a lifeline for seals. Because among these ridges are weak points in the ice - cracks that allow the seals to get in and out of the water.Which probably means walking through here…Arlo: Yeah!Arlo: ...is a pretty stupid idea.Arlo: That sounds like it was crackin’!Arlo: Watch out for this crack!Jay Rotella: When you think about where we're living and what that pup is about to face, only about two out of ten will survive to be adults. The scientist part says I hope you get all the help you can. That’s one of the things mothers do for their babies. So we’re trying to figure out the recipe for success. These female seals are very faithful to these places for their pupping. So they'll come in and during October and then they'll be here and raise their pups for a month.Caitlin: To figure out the recipe for seal success, jay and his team tag the newborn seals...Jay Rotella: I can see her tag numbers. She's wearing a pair on each of her hind flippers.Caitlin: …and this allows them to track the seals through their lives.Jay Rotella: When did this female start breeding. Which years did she have pups or not have pups. What were the ice conditions like. And try to figure out why are some years better for making babies than others.Caitlin: In the last 50 years, they’ve followed over 25,000 seals, and that has allowed them to learn a lot about this population.Jay Rotella: They look kinda cumbersome up here. You know they kind of flop along on their belly to move around. But when you see them in the water swimming, they become these athletes and you realize yeah they've—they have this very dual existence.Caitlin: These seals spend a lot of their lives in the water. Here, they fight for territory, look for food, and apparently... Sing.Caitlin: I have to say, they make some amazing sounds!Jay Rotella: Yeah they make some canary chirps and they make some big booms. Really great sounds. It's almost like they're singing these bird songs under water.Caitlin: Turns out, they can be pretty chatty up on the ice, too.Arlo: Oh, hey there!Arlo: Here in Antarctica, seals don’t have predators on the ice. Unlike most big mammals, you can get surprisingly close to them in their natural habitat. And because of that, you can capture some deeply intimate moments. And… a lot of poop.Caitlin: Yuck… gross.Arlo: That said, I come across one moment that stands out above all the rest..Arlo: So we’re watching this really incredible moment happen, the mom is trying to convince the pup that it’s time to learn how to swim.Jay Rotella: Earlier we were talking about things mothers do with milk. One of the other things they do is, some mothers go in that water and seem to just sit there and call to the pups and won’t come out and nurse them until the pups come in is what it looks like. And so we're wondering if some mothers make their pups swim, so to speak. Some pups hardly ever swim like ever in 30 days. And you think well that's kind of part of being a seal. Maybe you should learn to do that.Arlo: This pup couldn’t build up the courage to take his first plunge.Jay Rotella: Other pups start swimming maybe as early as a week old. And are in for hours and hours a day. So we're kind of curious because you try and drink that milk and get big. And if you go in cold water maybe you'll lose some weight. And so we're kind of curious if your mom makes you big and heavy at birth and then gives you lots of milk, are you willing to go swim more?Caitlin: Jay and his team are still searching for answers. The team lives out here for a couple months every year.Arlo: So this from New Zealand?Student: We think so because it says minced beef on it, and it doesn’t seem like an American thing to say.Jay Rotella:You’re gonna share?Caitlin: It’s cozy living conditions.Caitlin: Who’s the chef? Do you guys sit down for dinner like this all together every night?Jay Rotella: We do, every night.Caitlin: But I am impressed by how tight the seal team is. They’re like a second family for each other.And they seem to deeply enjoy the work.Kaitlin Macdonald: We were talking about earlier, it’ s really fun watching the pups grow up. I love it! I've seen one actual birth and then there have been a few times that where you pass by a mom, and you go do something and then you look back and you're like “wait she didn't have a pup when I walked by a minute ago!”Caitlin: That’s exactly what happened to us.Arlo: After dinner, when we went back outside, a new pup had been born… just in the short time we’d been away. A tender moment… found, of all places, in one of the harshest environments on Earth.Caitlin: Everyone has an idea of what Antarctica looks like.Caitlin: Hey Arlo.Arlo: Hey!Caitlin: Get any good photos?Arlo: Yeah, I’m also being one with the seals.Caitlin: But as we sat there watching the seals, we realized, there is so much more to this place than we could have ever imagined.Arlo: It feels magical.Arlo: You know, it’s really beautiful, if you ignore all the poop and blood.Caitlin: I want to show you somethingArlo: And it’s a spot where a piece of us will always stay.Caitlin: I named that one Arlo, it was born just a few days ago.Arlo: What?!Caitlin: So now we don’t have to name a crack after you, and you don’t have to fall in one.Arlo: Okay, okay, okay… let’s not go too far.Caitlin: I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to just watch stuff like this before.

Five stories high and emerging from the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, Blood Falls seeps into an ice-covered body of water called Lake Bonney. It’s one of the continent’s most enigmatic natural features and has fascinated scientists for decades. What makes it red? Does it always flow? And can anything actually survive near it?

Antarctica has a glacier that bleeds red. (At least, that’s what it looks like.)

Why is this Antarctic Glacier “Bleeding?”

Five stories high and emerging from the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, Blood Falls seeps into an ice-covered body of water called Lake Bonney. It’s one of the continent’s most enigmatic natural features and has fascinated scientists for decades. What makes it red? Does it always flow? And can anything actually survive near it? To find out—and see just how bizarre Blood Falls is with their own eyes—Caitlin and Arlo travel to the Dry Valleys, about 60 miles from McMurdo Station. There, they meet with microbiologist Jill Mikucki and hydrogeologist Peter Doran to investigate why this glacier looks the way it does, what lives there (spoiler: CHARISMATIC MICROBES!), and what clues it holds for finding and understanding life on other planets and moons in our solar system, like Mars, Jupiter’s Europa, and Saturn’s Enceladus. Answering these questions, it turns out, requires lots of probes, cameras, and even a massive sensor hanging from a helicopter.CORRECTION: A previous version of this video incorrectly stated that Enceladus is a moon of Jupiter. It is a moon of Saturn.

Did you know that Antarctica has a glacier that bleeds red? (At least, that’s what it looks like.)

Episode 3: Did you know that Antarctica has a glacier that bleeds red? (At least, that’s what it looks like.)

Why is this Antarctic Glacier “Bleeding?”Published: February 12, 2020Caitlin Saks: This might be the most shocking feature in all of Antarctica...Jill Mikucki: What do you think of when you see it?Caitlin: Honestly? I think of the glacier having its period.Jill Mikucki: OK. Yeah…Caitlin: Blood Falls. What is this place? Why is there so little ice on this part of antarctica? And why is this glacier bleeding?Arlo Pérez: We are in the Dry Valleys—one of the most unusual spots in Antarctica—because it is part of the 1% of the continent that isn’t covered by ice.Caitlin: Instead, here we find craggy mountains. Rock is carved by wind and grit to form impossible looking sculptures.Arlo: It looks more like Mars than Earth.Caitlin: This makes the Dry Valleys one of the most scientifically interesting regions to study on the planet.Jill Mikucki: I think it's a great analog for both Mars and a place like and Enceladus.Arlo: And, here in the Dry Valleys, Blood Falls is one of the most intriguing features.Peter Doran: Blood Falls is a bit of an obsession for a lot of people. There's nothingelse like this on Earth.Jill Mikucki: It's like this really visceral feature just jumps out at you... you know, Blood Falls.Peter Doran: It’s an outlier and so we learn from those extremes. It’s different than anything else we know.Arlo: To find out more about this exotic landscape, we’ve come to Lake Bonnie, to meet with scientists Jill Mikucki and Peter Doran.Caitlin: You heard that right—this is a lake.Peter Doran: It’s really like any other lake on earth but there’s just a really thick ice cover that stays here all the time.Caitlin: Peter studies the lakes and streams—he’s a hydrogeologist.Arlo: Jill’s a microbiologist. She studies what’s living here.Caitlin: So there's actually stuff living in the dirt?Jill Mikucki: Oh yeah, in the dirt and in the lakes, in the lake ice, in the rocks.Peter Doran: There's actually worms in the dirt. There are microscopic worms,nematodes.Caitlin: What?! I can’t believe anything lives here, where it can get down to -75 in winter.Jill Mikucki: What got me interested at first was this notion of how life survives below ice because of other worlds in our solar system—places like Mars, Europa, or Enceladus. These are going to be really cold places.Caitlin: So this is running water? That is actually the Blood Falls? Actually flowing?Jill Mikucki: I don’t know, we’ll see, let’s go find out.Caitlin: I’ve joined jill to investigate what exactly Blood Falls is, and why she’s so fascinated by it. It’s well below freezing, so I am surprised to see running water on a day like today. To figure out what's going on, we measure the temperature of the water.Jill Mikucki: Look at that's minus 5.2! I need to put my glove back on my hand.Caitlin: Wow. -5 Celsius is how much Fahrenheit?Jill Mikucki: You can do that in your voice over.Caitlin: Negative 5.2 degrees celsius is about 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Why is this water flowing almost 10 degrees below the freezing point of water?Jill Mikucki: Right now the salinity is reading, I don't know if you can't see that, 75 parts per thousand, 80, there it is, 83 parts per thousand.Caitlin: What's like ocean water?Jill Mikucki: 35.Caitlin: Oh wow. So this is super salty.Jill Mikucki: This is super salty.Caitlin: This water isn’t frozen because it is so salty—more than twice as salty as ocean water. But that also means something extraordinary about where this water comes from.Jill Mikucki: The fact that it's so salty tells you it's not glacier melt, right? It has to be coming from somewhere else.Caitlin: Glacier ice is made of hundreds to thousands of years worth of snowfall—and snow is made of fresh—not salty—water. So where is this briny water coming from? Looking around there’s another clue. The red color that makes this feature look bloody.Jill Mikucki: All the red here is iron oxides. But as you can see this water here is pretty clear. If the water is clear and there's iron in it, that means it hasn't been oxidized yet. And as it spends time at the surface, that's when it becomes oxidized and leaves this beautiful red color around.Caitlin: The red crust on this glacier is actually rust! But this means… not only is Blood Falls strangely salty, but the Blood Falls brine has also not been exposed to the atmosphere for a very long time. It's from deep below the glacier!Jill Mikucki: The liquid source below the glacier has potentially been isolated for millions of years. So, the next thing to do would be to collect some samples and take this back to the lab and see if there's any microbes in here.Caitlin: Cool.Caitlin: These microbes Jill hopes to find could offer insight into what kind of extreme life we might find elsewhere in the solar system … like on mars, where we know there’s salty liquid below the polar ice.Caitlin: It's so cool that it's actually flowing while we're here.Jill Mikucki: Yeah. This is amazing. This is actually quite fortunate. This is a tricky little feature it doesn't always flow when you'd like it to, I guess. So it's one of those challenging mysteries to study and it always keeps me guessing.Arlo: But what makes Blood Falls actually flow? Why is it only here that we see this bizzare feature? To find out, Peter Doran's team is watching it’s activity with a camera.Krista Myers: This camera has been taking photos for the past two years. Twice a day.Arlo: But what is the point of taking a picture of it?Krista Myers: No one really has a super complete record of actual flow events. The timing, how often, and when it’s flowing is not really known.Arlo: Looking at the time lapse over a few days, you can sometimes spot distinct discharge events—it isn’t always flowing.Caitlin: You could say that Blood Falls… isn’t regular.Peter Doran: We don't think there's a yearly cycle. So we're trying to figure out what the Cycle is and whether it's connected to seasonality, whether it's connected to maybe even windstorms. My view is Blood Falls is a pressure relief valve. Whenever there is a pressure change by a movement of the glacier something happens and sometimes Blood Falls squirts out. Sometimes it doesn't.Caitlin: Peter thinks that Blood Falls flows when there is pressure from the glacier on the underground liquid. Which begs the question: how big is this aquifer that feeds Blood Falls? Is this an isolated system? Or is Blood Falls tapping something… bigger?To find out, we have to peer deep below the ice… by taking to the skies. A project called Skytem flies a massive electromagnetic sensor over the area, allowing scientists to peel back the surface, and see what lies beneath.Peter Doran: Skytem can see hundreds of meters into the ground and tell us the difference between frozen ground and unfrozen ground and where there's water. Where there's groundwater.Caitlin: Skytem has revealed that there’s much more to the Dry Valleys than meets the eye. Here, the green shows underground liquid. Lots and lots of it. This part of the Dry Valleys has an expansive ground water system.Peter Doran: For the longest time, we didn't think there was groundwater underneath the Dry Valleys. We've always viewed these lakes as being isolated… they weren’t connected by any ground water system. And then we flew this sensor over. We spent two weeks flying the sensor around the Dry Valleys and it completely changed our perception of water and connectivity in the Dry Valleys.Jill Mikucki: So perhaps it's like a deep groundwater system that might exist on Mars. They've recently found a sub glacial lake below the southern-southern ice cap on Mars.Caitlin: And Blood Falls, is like a window into this alien environment.Peter Doran: It's a portal into the water beneath the surface of the valley. And it's the first one we've had.Caitlin: By studying it, scientists may discover clues about how life could evolve and survive in the extreme environments of other planets.Jill Mikucki: How do you live in the absence of sunlight for extended periods of time?What does that look like? What unique adaptations do these organisms have to be able to survive in cold darkness under extremely saline conditions?If we can understand how life operates below ice here we have a much better chance of knowing where to look or how to look for the life on other worlds.

Researchers hope they can better understand how climate change is affecting Antarctica’s vulnerable glaciers. Caitlin and Arlo meet with scientists & engineers at the 8-mile-long Erebus Glacier Tongue to discover how a 12-foot-long robot named Icefin might help save the world. Then, they head to the Florida-sized Thwaites glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - the front line of climate change.

A 12-foot-long robot named Icefin explores places where no boat nor diver can reach.

Exploring Antarctica's Threatened Glaciers (with a Robot)

Icefin is designed to test technologies for exploring Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. But before its successors go into space, Icefin has a serious job on Earth. By collecting data in Antarctica’s subglacial environment, researchers like Georgia Tech astrobiologist Britney Schmidt hope they can better understand how climate change is affecting Antarctica’s vulnerable glaciers. Caitlin and Arlo meet with Britney and her team of young scientists and engineers at the 8-mile-long Erebus Glacier Tongue to discover how this robot might just help save the world before its “grandkids” leave our planet. Then, Britney, her team, and Icefin head to the Florida-sized Thwaites glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Thwaites is one of the most remote places on Earth, but it’s the front line of climate change (in fact, it’s nicknamed “the Doomsday Glacier”). The thinning and melting of Thwaites’ ice contributes to about 4 percent of global sea level rise, and scientists fear the glacier may collapse within a few decades or centuries. Now, with the help of Icefin, scientists hope to better understand why Thwaites is melting so quickly today—and whether the glacier is at risk of accelerated melting in the near future.

Beneath Antarctica’s glaciers, a 12-foot-long robot named Icefin explores places where no boat nor diver can reach.

Episode 5: Beneath Antarctica’s glaciers, a 12-foot-long robot named Icefin explores places where no boat nor diver can reach.

Glacial Space OdysseyPublished March 11, 2020Arlo Pérez: This is the Erebus Glacier in AntarcticaCaitlin Saks: It flows off the flanks of the volcano Mt. Erebus, and into the frozen ocean.Arlo: Seeing the glacier tongue from space, it’s massive. Comparable to the size of Manhattan.Caitlin: But seeing it in person...Caitlin: Honestly, it’s a little shorter than I expected.Arlo: It’s not about the height, Caitlin, it’s about the depth of the cave.Arlo: Let’s go.Caitlin: Alright, we’re ready!Dennis Haskell: Nice!Caitlin: Scattered along the edges are hidden caves.Arlo: And we’ve joined mountaineer Dennis Haskell totrack them down.Caitlin: The caves are covered by snow. You need a good eye to find them…Arlo: But mostly a bit of muscle.Caitlin: When we came to Antarctica, we expected to find glaciers falling apart due to climate change. But that’s not exactly what we see right here.Arlo: This is wild.Caitlin: Woah! Oh my gosh. Look at these crystals! Did you see these?Arlo: It’s so cold and calm in this cave, that massive ice crystals form out of thin air.Caitlin: This is so cool! And they’re all over the place. They’re like lining everything.Caitlin: The size of these crystals are also an indicator that this cave is relatively safe. The larger the ice crystal, the longer this cavern has been here undisturbed.Caitlin: Oh my gosh this place is huge! It kinda opens up into a cavern. I kind of feel like we are inside the middle of a geode.Dennis Haskell: Yeah!Arlo: Instead of a melting planet, this feels like a portal to a frozen planet! So, what’s going on here?Caitlin: To find out, we need to join a science team that’s actually trying to reach an ice world far away from our own.Arlo: Specifically, Europa.Britney Schmidt: Europa is kind of the reason I get up in the morning. I'm interested in is there life beyond Earth.Caitlin: Europa is a moon of Jupiter with a thick layer of ice, covering an ocean that could be up to 100 miles deep! The big question is: could there be life in Europa’s ocean? To find out, NASA is hoping to eventually send a robot there.Arlo: But first, weneed to figure out how to even explore an ice-covered ocean. Just like Europa, underneath this ice is ocean.Britney Schmidt: Alright everyone, welcome to Dive 006!Caitlin: That’s why Britney Schmidt is here. Britney’s team is exploring the underside of the Erebus Glacier Tongue.Britney Schmidt: Mission goals, look for a path under the glacier heading towards there.Arlo: And the tool to explore under the ice is this guy—Icefin.Britney Schmidt: What it carries on it is a whole suite of science sensors that allow us to perceive the environment in a number of ways.Caitlin: So you just bring it out in three pieces, then? And put them together.Daniel Dichek: Yeah.Caitlin: Like Legos?Daniel Dichek: So here’s three pin black, and that should go all the way over to the left. There you go!Arlo: Assembling Icefin is a team effort.Daniel Dichek: So here is 3-pin black.Caitlin: Okay.Daniel Dichek: And so that should go all the way over to the left. There you go!Arlo: But lowering the robot to the water… that is a true exercise in cooperation.Matt Meister: I got it. If you guys can pull on the slack. Justin, will you push the sled back? Make sure the fiber going into the tent doesn’t get tugged on.Radios: Batteries are all at 100%. Checking power system now.Arlo: It’s tethered by a thin and extremely delicate fiberoptic cable that will transmit all the data back to mission control.Matt Meister: How’s it look in there?Radio: Everything looks pretty good!Arlo: When a robot like this goes to Europa, this process will have to be automated, and there will be no tether. But for now, this fragile yellow cable is the robot’s lifeline. If it breaks… it’s game over.Radio: It looks like the nose is clear of the hole now, over.Arlo: Once the robot is launched, operations move into mission control…Matt Meister: Okay, we’re going to keep diving.Radio: Copy!Caitlin: Which today is inside this little yellow tent.Britney Schmidt: Dan, can I get a battery check please?Caitlin: This is where they pilot the multi-million dollar robot through a dark, unexplored, treacherous subglacial environment.Arlo: Yep, that is a PlayStation controller. And no… they didn’t let me drive. I tried.Britney Schmidt: We’re going to use the ice as a guide, and we’re going to head for the actual glacier tongue.Radio: Okay, copy that!Caitlin: We’ve lowered the robot through the sea ice, which is only about 12 feet thick.But we’re heading toward the Erebus Glacier.Arlo: Once we get there, it’s like the Antarctic upside down.Caitlin: Even though above the surface, the Erebus Glacier is less than 100 feet high, itplunges nearly 1000 feet down into the abyss.Arlo: It’s easy to imagine how this might be what it feels like to explore the alien ocean of Europa.Caitlin: They encounter all sorts of surreal life forms… some familiar ones…Arlo: And a lot of shrimp.Britney Schmidt: Look at his legs! He’s so cute. (Laughter)Caitlin: In addition to spotting critters, Britney’s team is collecting data about the ocean physics and chemistry, and also mapping the environment—just like they’d hope to do on Europa. They’re testing which instruments are the most useful, and literally learning to drive. But they aren’t just aimlessly wandering… they actually have a very specific destination.Caitlin: So the robot comes from over there. Swims by right here where you have a light.Britney Schmidt: Swim right here and head right for these kind of—the underside of where these kind of shiny peaks are coming out. So we are trying to get to where it folds, back there. That’s the grounding line.Caitlin: What’s the grounding line?Britney Schmidt: Basically the place where the glacier comes off the land and starts to float in the ocean.Caitlin: The grounding line is a critical juncture for a glacier—where the glacier, ground, and water all meet. This is where Icefin is heading; a spot where no person or machine has been before. And what happens right here, can have a major impact on what happens to the glacier further inland.Britney Schmidt: As the ocean warms up it's eroding that place. And so then the grounding line moves back over time and that can make the whole thing unstable. So then it's more melting, faster moving ice, more melting, faster moving ice. So it's basically it is a way of pulling ice from the interior of Antarctica that is currently held up by ground into the ocean where it can contribute to sea level rise.Caitlin: So, it turns out that this mission isn’t just about Europa … it’s also investigating how the ocean right here on Earth can destabilize ice, leading eventually to sea level rise.Arlo: The Erebus Glacier isn’t where we are seeing major impacts of warming water. But further north, it’s a different story. There are far more massive glaciers, like the Thwaites Glacier, which is about the size of Florida. And it’s not doing so well. Over the past 30 years, the flow of ice into the ocean has nearly doubled.Britney Schmidt: Thwaites is an environment where there's a lot more warmer ocean water making it onto the continent and making it underneath the glacier. It's incredibly unstable. The grounding line is rapidly retreating.Caitlin: Thwaites is the glacier that is keeping scientists up at night. That’s why the team is heading there next… as part of an international collaboration to investigate the glacier.David Holland: Here we are on Thwaites Glacier, near the grounding zone. The grounding zone to the south is behind me. And we’re attempting to drill into that…Caitlin: Thwaites alone is already responsible for about 4% of sea level rise. And it is showing signs of collapsing further. In 2019, scientists reported that they had found a massive cavity under the glacier. About 14 billion tons of ice had melted — most of it in just 3 years.Arlo: And if that’s not bad enough: if Thwaites does collapse, it could destabilize a much larger region of ice, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This could lead up to about 11 feet of sea level rise. So… scientists need to get under Thwaites and see what’s going on... Fast.Britney Schmidt: The goal there is to do exactly what we’re practicing here at Erebus Glacier Tongue, which is to explore these places where glaciers are becoming unstable.Caitlin: After the robot finds and maps the grounding line of the Thwaites Glacier... And scientists combine that with other data from the collaboration—we will be able to better understand how the glacier is deteriorating, and predict how fast it might fall apart.Britney Schmidt: It's kind of a game there in how much can we do to make our models better and make our physical understanding better, how much can we mitigate and then how much do we have to prepare for.Caitlin: Our stomping ground, the Erebus Glacier Tongue, was really just a training ground for Icefin, practicing for Thwaites.Arlo: It’s like Erebus was the tutorial and Thwaites is the boss fight. Europa… well, that might be in the expansion pack.Britney Schmidt: We're motivated in the long run by getting this data that will send us into space but there's important climate problems and really just unknowns about the earth that we live in.Caitlin: Robots like Icefin might one day allow us to discover life on another world.Arlo: But while it learns the ropes of interplanetary travel… there’s a lot left to explore right here on Earth.

Antarctica is home to a handful of research stations. These stations are occupied by scientists and other staffers, all of whom generate a whole lot of waste. Under the Antarctic Treaty System, an international agreement to protect the continent, waste of any kind—garbage, human poop, you name it—can’t be left on the continent. So what happens to it?

What happens to all the garbage—and human poop—in Antarctica?

Where Does the Poop in Antarctica Go?

Antarctica is home to McMurdo Station, the U.S. Antarctic Program’s base of operations, and a handful of other research stations. These stations are occupied by scientists and other staffers, all of whom generate a whole lot of waste. And every scientist and staffer, like everybody else on Planet Earth, poops. (If you didn’t know this, maybe give “Everyone Poops” a read after you watch this episode.) Under the Antarctic Treaty System, an international agreement to protect the continent, waste of any kind—garbage, human poop, you name it—can’t be left on the continent. So what happens to it?To find out, Caitlin and Arlo embark on their most peculiar Antarctic quest yet. At McMurdo Station, as Caitlin discovers the surprisingly scientific methods of treating sewage with Lead Waste Water Operator and biologist Yubecca Bragg, Arlo meets with Waste Program Manager James VanMatre to find out what happens to all of the outpost’s other trash. Under the guidance of these waste enthusiasts, Caitlin and Arlo meet microscopic bristle worms, water bears, the “Muffin Monster,” and a quirky fleet of forklifts nicknamed “Pickles”—and they learn that dealing with Antarctica’s trash is as rewarding as it is important.

Episode 6: What happens to all the garbage—and human poop—in Antarctica?

Every Scientist PoopsPublished: March 25, 2020Arlo Pérez: So, one thing you should know about NOVA is that we love poo. And pee. And gross things in general. We have to film what we’re calling “The Poop Episode.” And that requires us to film a little section of it in an actual bathroom.Caitlin Saks: I don’t understand why we have to use the Men’s Room. Arlo: Personally, I think Zac and I do not want to be arrested.Zachary Fink: So Men’s Room it is.Arlo: Men’s Room it is!Caitlin: Hey Arlo? What do you think they do with all the poop?Arlo: Huh… I think we should go find out!Arlo: Antarctica is the most pristine continent on our planet. But keeping it that way is a challenge...Caitlin: McMurdo—the largest station in Antarctica—houses about 900 people in summer.Arlo: And those people generate two and a half million pounds of trash.Caitlin: And there are about 350 toilets which flush to…. somewhere.Arlo: Which makes us wonder… where does all our waste actually go?Caitlin: Fortunately, it’s not too hard to find out. In McMurdo, all of the pipes are above ground… literally miles of them! So, it’s surprisingly easy to just follow the poop… I mean pipes. Follow the poop-pipes.Yubecca Bragg: Some of them are poop pipes, some of them are water pipes. And some of them are captured heat.Caitlin: And they lead here… to the wastewater treatment plant, where biologist Yubecca Bragg has the unusual job of fostering a poop-eating ecosystem.Yubecca Bragg: To me that's one of the greatest jobs I could ever have. Caitlin: 24 hours a day, all the sewage from McMurdo flows into this building. That’s the shower and laundry water, the dish water. And yep… the toilet water.And this is where it gets cleaned up enough that it can be dumped back out into the ocean—about 30,000 gallons of it daily.Yubecca Bragg: As it comes in, this is the real deal. So, we’re at 12:30. This is the height of lunch. And so, lots of people are using the bathroom, and we have shift changes. Lots of people are showering.Caitlin: The first step: all the raw sewage goes through the muffin monster. No joke, it’s actually called the muffin monster. It grinds everything up so that what we see is this brown water.Yubecca Bragg: This is what it looks like coming in.Caitlin: There’s like chunks in there!Yubecca Bragg: Yeah, there’s chunks in there.Caitlin: The sewage is full of biological material that can harm the environment.Yubecca Bragg: Because this really is one of the grossest things we do.Caitlin: And… some non-biological material.Yubecca Bragg: Once a day we have to clean this out. So, you ready?Caitlin: Yeah.Yubecca Bragg: Okay.Caitlin: Ohhhh!Yubecca Bragg: It’s kinda icky. You want to help out today?Caitlin: Do I have to?Yubecca Bragg: Yeah…Caitlin: This is called the splitter box.Yubecca Bragg: So, what we do is we just scrape.Caitlin: And it’s where, every day, a human being has to clean out all the stuff that you knew you were not supposed to flush… but you did anyway.Yubecca Bragg: Things like wet wipes, sanitary items, condoms.Caitlin: And today, that human being is me.Yubecca Bragg: So, you want to give it a go? You want to just pull it up?Caitlin: Can you tell when certain meals have been served?Yubecca Bragg: Absolutely.Caitlin: Really!? How long have you been doing this job?Yubecca Bragg: Um… for about 11 years here. There’s a good chunk right over there.Caitlin: Oh! That is a good chunk.Arlo: While Caitlin tracks down where all the poop goes, I head up to the waste barn.James VanMatre: Oh, man,I think this is one of the best jobs on station. Good mix of indoor/outdoor work. Small team working together. We break things for a living. It's fantastic. Yeah, I can't imagine working anywhere else.Arlo: James VanMatre and his team of “wasties”, as they call themselves, take care of all the other trash on station—that’s the food waste, the recycling, hazardous materials. All of it.James VanMatre: Alright team, let’s make it go away, huh!Arlo: Today, I am helping with the cardboard.Arlo: I like your system!Arlo: And… they get a lot of it—about three dumpsters a day.Arlo: So, where does this all go?James VanMatre: All the trash here goes to California.Arlo: Wait, California?James VanMatre: Oh yeah!Arlo: How come?James VanMatre: Well, New Zealand doesn’t want it. [Laughs] And because of the treaty, it all has to leave the continent.Arlo: That treaty is the Antarctic Treaty. It’s an international agreement established to protect the continent.James VanMatre: We no longer burn, bury or dump waste in Antarctica. We get our annual supply vessel that comes in in February and we will put a year's worth of trash on it and you will see 400 shipping containers where the garbage leaves the station at one time.Arlo: While boxing up hundreds of containers of trash might not sound like the most glamorous job… at least I’m not handling poop.Yubecca Bragg: These are our different chambers.Caitlin: After all the big stuff gets filtered out at the splitter box, the wastewater goes into these huge tanks.Caitlin: And what's happening in these things.Yubecca Bragg: Well, there's the breakdown of the waste. So, at this end, we have the raw sewage coming in. And we're mixing it with all of the bugs coming back from the end of the process.Caitlin: And what are bugs?Yubecca Bragg: Microorganisms. They're the real workers in the plant. We're just the stewards of the microorganisms.Caitlin: Bugs are the key to how McMurdo deals with all our poop?!? Fascinating!Yubecca Bragg: And then when you bring it up, we’re just gonna put it in the bucket.Caitlin: To see how this works, Yubecca shows me how to sample the stuff in the digesters…Yubecca Bragg: Alright.Caitlin: The wastewater treatment plant in McMurdo actually has its own microbiology lab!Yubecca Bragg: Ah! Here we go. So, check this guy out.Caitlin: Whoa.Yubecca Bragg: Yeah.Caitlin: That thing is huge.Yubecca Bragg: Right, he's like a boa constrictor, yeah?Caitlin: Yeah.Yubecca Bragg: So, you seehe's got these bristles and that just propels him through the flock.Caitlin: And the flock is the... ?Yubecca Bragg: Is the poo. So that's our poo right there.Caitlin: Oh. Yeah.Caitlin: So, what are the bugs doing to the poop?Yubecca Bragg: Well, they're eating your poop.Caitlin: They're eating it?Caitlin: Yup. These bugs don’t think of our poop as disgusting. They think of it as energy.Yubecca Bragg: And you can see inside of him here the digestion. He's got a bellyful.Caitlin: Him eating our poop and then making his own poop.Yubecca Bragg: Yep, and then something smaller is coming along and eating his poop.Caitlin: It's the food chain! The poop chain.Caitlin: Looking at it this way, the grossness of poop kinda disappears. Actually, the poop chain is literally how the grossness disappears. As the bugs eat our poop, they remove almost all of the pollutants from the wastewater.It’s pretty elegant.Yubecca Bragg: Oh, there's the bear.Caitlin: Oh, is that a water bear?!Yubecca Bragg: There's our water bear.Caitlin: Wow!Yubecca Bragg: Check it out Caitlin.Caitlin: Water bears are like the superheroes of microorganisms. They are nearly indestructible—they can survive frozen in ice, in the vacuum of space, and they thrive in our poop!Caitlin: What are their role in the process?Yubecca Bragg: They're just another microorganism that breaks down the waste.Caitlin: They must be particularly special; you were excited to see them.Yubecca Bragg: Well they're the cutest. I mean come on.Caitlin: Now, I’m kinda glad that I’m not the one stuck at the dump.James VanMatre: This is fortress rocks. It's a very fancy name for the town dump, basically.Arlo: This field of shipping containers is filled with trash throughout the year.James VanMatre: We store all our full containers up here that are going to go on the vessel.Arlo: And the workhorses filling these containers? A group of old forklifts… lovingly nicknamed “pickles.”James VanMatre: I believe it’s the green color and the overall shape that made it a pickle… that’s a creative mind ‘cause I don’t really see It.Arlo: The pickles fit perfectly into the shipping containers, which is why the “wasties” use them to load the compacted trash.Arlo: So, is this where it comes out?Arlo: Like this 800lb bail of cardboard I just made.James VanMatre: So, come on around, we’ll get you in. And we’ll go see if we can get that cardboard bail you made. You ready?Arlo: My task is to put the cardboard into a shipping container. Seems pretty straightforward, right?James VanMatre: You’re going to go in real slow ‘cause there’s no ramp. This is the next level stuff here, but I think you can do it.Arlo: Turns out, it’s excruciatingly difficult.James VanMatre: [Laughs] This is not an easy machine to drive. And this is not the easiest task. So yeah, bring the forks up a bit… Now go straight down. Go all the way in. Go down. Now go out. But, it’s not a pure science. Until you get this right, you’re stuck in there.Arlo: Oh, yeah!James VanMatre: I could’ve picked an easier job for him. [Laughs]Caitlin: While Arlo wrestles with the pickle, I’m getting a new perspective. The digesters are like an aquarium for poop-eating bugs. And Yubecca is their keeper… making sure they have a healthy poopy ecosystem. After the bugs have feasted on our poop…Yubecca Bragg: So you can see, it’s pretty clear.Caitlin: …the sludge mixture can be separated into clear water that, with a bit of UV treatment, can go into the ocean… And dry solids that end up here.Caitlin: This is the box of poo!Yubecca Bragg: This is the box of poo!Caitlin: Oh my God. Look at this. That's a different kind of poo!Caitlin: This is basically fertilizer now.Caitlin: It looks like dirt. What does it smell like? Doesn't smell too bad.Yubecca Bragg: Yeah, it's a little earthy.Caitlin: Want to Smell?Zac: How’s it taste?Caitlin: No not doing that!Caitlin: Still definitely not something I’d want to taste. Or is it?Yubecca Bragg: So sometimes this is where we'll have the tomatoes germinate.Caitlin: Wait, wait... what?Yubecca Bragg: Yeah. So, the tomatoes make it all the way through our system. Five to seven days after we press. Boom! We have tomatoes growing.Caitlin: You heard that right. Tomato seeds from our food. Pass through our bodies. Through the poop pipes. Past the bugs. To end up in this box… and actually sprout new tomato plants. And from there...Caitlin: I was okay with the vegetables for like the first few days…Arlo: Okay, no, they don’tactually get served in the cafeteria. The tomatoes, along with the rest of the waste, gets shipped to California where they’ll be incinerated. But before that can happen, it comes up here to me, to be put in one of these shipping containers. That is, if I can ever get out of this one.James VanMatre: Yeah, get as much of the bottom of that bail touching the one on the floor. And that will help you get out from underneath it.James VanMatre: Nailed it! [Laughter]Arlo: Okay, this job is awesome.Caitlin: We started out wanting to know where all the waste goes.Arlo: It was basically supposed to be a joke episode.Caitlin: But what we thought would be the grossest jobs on station…James VanMatre: Nice job man! That was one of the harder jobs our people do in this thing.Caitlin: …Were actually really rewarding.Arlo: That was so fun!Arlo: And… they’re not even that gross.James VanMatre: This is the best place in the world to be a trashman. No flies. No rats. Nothing rots.Caitlin: Instead, they’re the jobs that keep this station running. And protect the pristine Antarctic environment.Yubecca Bragg: One of the most amazing places to be an environmental steward. I'm pretty happy in the plant.James: So, you made the bail, you picked it up, and you put it in the thing. You did the whole task!Arlo: Thank you very much! So, do I get the job? [Laughs]James VanMatre: You can come down and work in waste! You let me know. [Laughs]Zac: I didn’t check under the toilets. There was definitely somebody in there.Caitlin: We’re moving into the Ladies’ Room because…Zac: Men’s Room has some serious traffic.Caitlin: Anybody home?Zac: Alright sound of one toilet flushing by Caitlin Saks.Arlo: That is the saddest flush!Zac: Weak, weak flush![Laughter].Zac: You’re over flushing it. So lame! Alright, I’m going with Arlo. Okay, quiet on the set.[Sound of flushing]Zac: That’s a solid flush.[Laughter]

Arlo and Caitlin learn that the Antarctic marine realm is not only spectacular to see, but fascinating for scientists to study. The water is so cold that fish inhabiting it should freeze like an icicle. So how do Antarctica’s fish, which penguins and seals rely on for food, survive in waters below their freezing point?

How do Antarctica’s fish survive in waters below their freezing point?

Why Don’t Fish Freeze in Antarctica?

Bizarre creatures—ancient sponges, gigantic jellyfish, sea spiders, ribbon worms, and notothenioid fishes that manage not to freeze—make their home here. “Every time I come down here, every year, I always find something I haven’t seen before,” diver Steve Rupp says.To discover Antarctica’s dazzling hidden underbelly, host Arlo Pérez meets with Steve and his fellow Antarctic diver Rob Robbins, while host Caitlin Saks explores the McMurdo Aquarium with evolutionary physiologist Chi-Hing Christina Cheng. Arlo and Caitlin learn that the Antarctic marine realm is not only spectacular to see, but fascinating for scientists to study. The water is so cold that fish inhabiting it should freeze like an icicle, a phenomenon that evolutionary biologist Paul Cziko uses supercooled water, snow, and fish guts to demonstrate.So how do Antarctica’s fish, which penguins and seals rely on for food, survive in waters below their freezing point? To find out, Caitlin and Arlo go ice fishing with a local legend, biologist Art DeVries, who has been studying fish physiology in Antarctica since 1961. The secret is an evolutionary marvel that has major implications...for ICE CREAM.

Under the ice in Antarctica is a world few people ever get to see.

Episode 7: Under the ice in Antarctica is a world few people ever get to see.

Finding NotothenioidsPublished: April 8, 2020Caitlin Saks: Under the ice in Antarctica, there is a world that few people ever see.Paul Cziko: It's just one of the most beautiful things in the world.Rob Robbins: It's really hard to describe.Steven Rupp: Every time I come down here, every year I always find something I haven't seen before.Paul Cziko: It’s just a place teeming with life.Rob Robbins: I promise you, like, I don’t go in the water without going ‘Holy crap, I get to do this!’Arlo Pérez: How do I help?Arlo: Today I'm helping Rob Robbins and Steve Rupp. They are some of the most hardcore people we’ve evermet, because they dive underneath the Antarctic ice.Rob Robbins: It is spectacular. There’s no diving like it anywhere else. There’s been a lot more astronauts than there have been divers. We can think of about 395 people have dove in Antarctica, and there’s been... almost 600 Astronauts.Arlo: Where’s mine?Steven Rupp: Oh it’s uh..it’s that pink one there.Arlo: When scientists aren’t trained, or are too busy to venture below the ice, they rely on Steve and Rob.Arlo: So that’s your emergency oxygen?Steven Rupp: Yeah, and it’s kinda at the safety stop level.Rob Robbins: Groups come down, and we do their diving for them.Steven Rupp: And our job is sampling, leaving instruments, collecting stuff that they’ve left over the years.Steven Rupp: Now the hard part!Rob Robbins: The floors keep getting lower.Arlo: Under the ice, there’s this whole world of bizarre organisms that have fascinated scientists for decades. Ribbon worms, ancient sponges, giant jellyfish. These are just some of the creatures that make this place feel like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie.Caitlin: It’s a baby! A baby Antarctic sea star.Caitlin: I’ve come to the McMurdo Aquarium...Caitlin: So many alien-like creatures in here.Caitlin: ..to figure out why scientists are so interested in life under the ice.Chi-Hing Christina Cheng: So this one is actually pretty small, it’s about like 30-40 pounds.Caitlin: That does not look small to me, what is it?Chi-Hing Christina Cheng: It is called the Antarctic toothfish.Caitlin: Gosh, and you guys catch these for research?Chi-Hing Christina Cheng: We catch these for research.Caitlin: Look at this guy. This guy is huge. Hey come back here!Chi-Hing Christina Cheng: Come back! [Laughter]Caitlin: This water is so cold that I feel like my hand’s going to fall off.Chi-Hing Christina Cheng: It is freezingly cold, yes.Caitlin: Really, really cold!Caitlin: And this makes me wonder...Zachary Fink: Did you touch it?Caitlin: I touched it.Zachary: I can’t see. You gotta do it again.Caitlin: I can’t do it again!!!Caitlin: How can these fish possibly survive?Caitlin: Turns out, that’s part of what Paul Cziko is studying. Because fish really should be frozen in this water.Paul Cziko: So this is 28 degree Fahrenheit water, it’s right at its freezing point.Caitlin: And to understand why…Paul Cziko: Some of the coldest water on the planet.Caitlin: ...I gotta stick my hand in this water... again.Paul Cziko: The goal here is to see how long you can keep wiggling your fingers.Caitlin: Can this, like, permanently hurt me?Paul Cziko: [Laughter] No, ‘cause you're a warm blooded animal.Caitlin: The salt in the ocean water causes it to freeze at 28 degrees Fahrenheit—four degrees below the freezing point of fresh water.Paul Cziko: Are you wiggling? You’re not wiggling, you’re..Caitlin: I am wiggling!Paul Cziko: You’re opening and closing![Laughter]Caitlin: This hurts…Paul Cziko: You’re at 33 seconds!Caitlin: It hurts so much!Caitlin: ...But it shows that I am a warm blooded animal—my body fights to keep me the same temperature. That’s why I could stick my hand in this water for some time. And Paul...Paul Cziko: Can I do a minute?Caitlin: ...Well, for a bit more time.Paul Cziko: I think I can do a minute.Caitlin: But fish are different. Most are cold blooded, so they become the temperature of their surroundings... and that’s the problem.Paul Cziko: So any fish that you throw in here should be frozen solid. Right, if they touch ice they should just freeze and die.Caitlin: Instantly?Paul Cziko: Yes pretty much instantly, within a few seconds.Caitlin: Why so fast?Paul Cziko: Because they're below their freezing point. Ice wants to grow. So if you touch them with ice, a normal fish, it would freeze solid instantly. Right?Caitlin: I... didn’t get it. Why should touching ice cause the fish to freeze instantly? And then… why don’t they?Paul Cziko: These tubes are... they’re about at 24 degrees Fahrenheit.Caitlin: To show me what’s going on, Paul sets up a demo.Paul Cziko: So let me go get a tiny bit of snow from outside.Caitlin: When he drops a bit of snow into the test tube of water—the entire thing freezes. In seconds! This happens because the water is supercooled.Paul Cziko: So liquids exist below their freezing point without freezing. And you can take a bottle of pure water that you buy at the store and put it in your freezer. It’ll get down to, I don’t know, 10 degrees Fahrenheit or so. But it’ll be liquid until you touch it with a piece of ice.Caitlin: For the ice molecules to arrange into a crystal structure, they need a nucleation site—a place where the crystallization is triggered. In the first demo, a small piece of ice was that trigger.But here’s where it gets interesting...Paul Cziko: So these fishes are from the environment. They have ice in their body. Just naturally. Naturally occuring ice that exists in the environment, that has somehow gotten into their body.Caitlin: So when Paul takes a tissue sample from one of the Antarctic fish…it also freezes instantly!Paul Cziko: Did that fish have ice in it?Caitlin: Yes!Paul Cziko: Yes, and how do you know?Caitlin: The whole test tube froze! Immediately!Paul Cziko: The whole test tube froze. So the ice crystal in the fish seeded this tube, and it grew ice.Caitlin: But if all these fish are cold blooded,have ice in their bodies, and are swimming in water below their freezing point…why aren’t they frozen? What’s going on?Arlo: To find out, we head out on a specimen collecting expedition. Or, in other words:Caitlin: This should be a nice relaxing fishing trip. Right? [Laughter]Arlo: You couldn’t even say that with a straight face!Arlo: Paul’s actually one of the scientists who can do his own diving. But sometimes...Paul Cziko: Fishing here is so easy. [Laughter]Arlo: The low tech solution is best!Paul Cziko: From the surface we often drill 10 inch holes, through eight to 15 feet of ice. Drop a line in with a little hook. We often use these little Snoopy poles that you... that you buy at Wal-Mart or whatever.Arlo: Woo, 80 feet is way longer than I expected.Paul Cziko: The fish here are actually really easy to catch.Arlo: Oh no! Is it...Paul Cziko: You don’t need to hold it higher, just reel faster.Paul Cziko: The fish that we study most here are the notothenioids. So this is a group of fishes that dominates the coldest regions around Antarctica. And they all descend from a common ancestor that evolved the solution to the problem of freezing.Caitlin: And there’s one man who knows this better than anyone: Art Devries.Caitlin: So I felt a bite, how do I tell if it’s still on there?Caitlin: Around here…Arthur DeVries: Drop it to the bottom once.Caitlin: Art is a legend.Caitlin: You've been doing this for a long time, huh?Arthur DeVries: Yeah. I started out in, what was it....1961.Caitlin: Wow. Over 50 years.Arthur DeVries: Yeah. In those days we had to cut the holes with chainsaws.Caitlin: Art’s the one who cracked the case of how these fish survive.Arthur DeVries: As you can see, there are lots of ice crystals around. Lots of ice. So they've evolved this antifreeze protein which recognizes the ice crystals, binds to it, and prevents it from growing.Caitlin: You heard that right—Art discovered that these fish have antifreeze!Caitlin: But, it isn’t like the antifreeze in your car. These fish have a special kind of antifreeze protein.Arthur DeVries: Look at it like putting a hairnet. It encases the ice crystals and prevents them from growing.Caitlin: Under the microscope, you can see the difference between a particle of ice with and without the antifreeze protein. On the left, ice is growing normally in water. But on the right, the ice has antifreeze proteins binding to it, arresting its growth. These same proteins bind to the ice crystals in the fish bodies, and that keeps that ice from growing and freezing the fish. This allows fish to swim in ocean water that is a couple degrees below their freezing point. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s all they need to stay alive.Arlo: Alright! Got some dinner!Caitlin: Well...almost all they need.Arlo: Or a science experiment, you know!Paul Cziko: They’re full of parasites, I’m not sure you want to eat ‘em.[Laughter]Arlo: Oh, there we go! Ayyy!Paul Cziko: Yayyy!Arlo: We‘re catching these fish so Paul and Art can study what happens to all those accumulated ice crystals in the fish bodies.Paul Cziko: So they actually accumulate ice crystals in their bodies over their lives. And these ice crystals are just there. They don't grow because they're covered with antifreeze proteins.Caitlin: Are there any real world applications for these antifreeze proteins?Paul Cziko: You mean besides keeping the fish alive?Caitlin: Practical applications!Paul Cziko: One company has been putting fish antifreeze protein in ice cream. And that keeps it nice and creamy and smooth.Arlo: While, for Caitlin and I, this is clearly the most important outcome from studying these fish… these antifreeze proteins also play a surprisingly vital role in making Antarctica what it is today.Paul Cziko: There's a lot of other parts of the food chain that depend on these fishes. The penguins, and the seals, eat notothenioid fishes. If these fishes hadn't evolved the mechanism to avoid freezing, they wouldn't be here.Caitlin: It's mind-blowing to think that these weird looking fish... make life in Antarctica what it is today.

In Antarctica, it’s so cold that the average person needs to consume between 3,200 and 5,000 calories a day. And because the continent is frozen, no food grows there naturally. So how does the population of scientists and support personnel, hundreds of whom every year visit Antarctica’s largest research base, McMurdo Station, stay fed?

How do the scientists and support personnel stay fed?

What Do You Eat in Antarctica?

Generally, an adult human consumes around 1,600 to 3,000 calories daily. But in colder climates, people need to eat more: Keeping our warm-blooded bodies warm requires a lot of energy. In Antarctica, it’s so cold that the average person needs to consume between 3,200 and 5,000 calories a day (watch out, Michael Phelps). And because the continent is frozen, no food grows there naturally. So how does the population of scientists and support personnel, hundreds of whom every year visit Antarctica’s largest research base, McMurdo Station, stay fed?Throughout their one-month stay in Antarctica, hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Perez discover the secret sauce of Antarctic cooking from experts at McMurdo Station’s galley (Hint: Need to reconstitute a meal? Just add cheese! Need to keep that cheese beyond its expiration date? That’s what freezers are for) and from scientists at remote research sites. And to learn about the history of Antarctic food storage, they tour Robert Falcon Scott and his 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition team’s historically-preserved hut.Along the way, Caitlin and Arlo discover the glory of 24/7 pizza and “freshies,” the cardboard-like texture of a protein bar several years past its expiration date, and the true meaning of “eat your vegetables.”

If you’re a penguin or seabird, there’s plenty of fish (and some seal placentas) to go around in Antarctica. But what do the people there eat?

Episode 8: If you’re a penguin or seabird, there’s plenty of fish (and some seal placentas) to go around in Antarctica. But what do the people there eat?

Antarctica’s Test KitchenPublish Date: April 22, 2020Arlo Pérez: Antarctica is a continent where basically no food grows.Caitlin Saks: Penguins regurgitate seafood to feed their young. And we caught a bird feasting on the placenta of a newborn seal.Arlo: You could say, options are pretty limited here. So, what are we, now hardened Antarctic explorers, supposed to eat?Caitlin: From the moment we landed—Caitlin: —What’s this?Caitlin: Arlo and I were basically obsessed with food.Caitlin: Stop eating nuts, we’re about to order a pizzaArlo: But I’m hungryCaitlin: If you’re going to get a slice of pizza 20 mins before dinner time, I’m at least going to shame you about it. Ew!Caitlin: For good reason...Tom Senty: It’s the fuel, yeah!Caitlin: Tom Senty is the culinary manager at McMurdo Station.Tom Senty: The amount of calories needed for somebody working out in the deep field can be 3200 to almost 5000 calories every day.Arlo: For context, the USDA recommends average adults to consume between 1600 and 3000 calories per day. Not only is working down here just by nature very physically demanding. But the extreme cold also itself causes you to burn more calories to keep warm.Caitlin: And we’re not just making this up… loads of scientific research supports it. So we craved food—especially carbs—All the time.Caitlin: There's like three more pounds of pasta in there.Arlo: And it’s not just us.Krista Myers: Well my second year, I decided to go on a diet and my diet meant no thirds.Jill Mikucki: No what?Krista Myers: No thirds.Caitlin: You can still have seconds!Arlo: The station is home to around 900 people in summer. So, the kitchen staff is responsible for feeding a lot of very hungry mouths.Caitlin: And a huge amount of food needs to be prepared to keep the station running.Caitlin: Wow, this is big! Everything here is supersized!Adie Rosic: Yes.Caitlin: Like that is a tub of chips!Caitlin: And that takes a lot of planning.Tom Senty: So we’re creeping on almost thinking a million meals out to make sure I don't run out of bacon right at the end, if you will.Caitlin: A massive food order is placed in May for the following year. Then all the food gets shipped down on a boat that arrives in January. And that food needs to feed the population for the next year.Caitlin: That’s unfathomable. You’re planning for a million meals 18 months in advance!Tom Senty: Yeah. Right.Arlo: So how do they do it? What is the secret sauce?Caitlin: Our first clue can be found here… in the historically preserved hut of Robert Falcon Scott.Caitlin: So, is everything we are seeing in here vintage?Michael Jackson: Yeah, it’s exactly as it was…Caitlin: So that pot? Scott used that pot?Michael Jackson: Yeah. Scott used that pot.Caitlin: And this table. Oh sorry, I probably wasn’t supposed to touch it.Michael Jackson: [laughs]Caitlin: We’ll cut that part out.Arlo: Scott’s team was one of the earliest to explore the continent.Caitlin: I told you I’d cook you something!Arlo: And some of their provisions are literallystill on the shelf.Arlo: Hold this for me. No, wait, come back, where you going? Alright.Arlo: I’d just want to point out how Heinz was still a thing at this time.Caitlin: Pickling, canning, jarring, and other methods kept these foods shelf stable for those explorers. And they’re still here today.Caitlin: Anchovy paste. Gooseberry! Pickles… pickles are a big thing here. They’re kind of my favorite Antarctic food. I wonder if this stuff is still edible. Like, can you eat something that was pickled 100 years ago?Michael Jackson: You can try.Caitlin: Somebody in the galley mentioned to me that expiration dates are not really a thing.Michael Jackson: That’s true.Arlo: That might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s no joke. Expiration dates are actually just ignored down here.Michael Jackson: I’ve had a, like a sandwich in my backpack that I’ve had for a month and I still would not hesitate to eat that thing.Arlo: We were told that they are more of a suggestion.Zac: What’s your expiration date?Caitlin: It’s rubbed off. I think it’s 10 June 2015.Caitlin: And that’s just something we had to embrace.Zac: How’s it taste?Caitlin: Like cardboard. With a slight peanut butter tinge.Caitlin: And it’s not just bars…Caitlin: Would you like a bite?Zac: You’re really selling it.Caitlin: Even in the McMurdo galley, a lot of the food that is served is expired.Tom Senty: Expired food is something you’ve been eating the entire time you’re here.Caitlin: Yeah! I noticed. [Laughs].Tom Senty: It's inevitable. Lots of categories like cheese for instance… that cheese will get down already expired. We haven't even gotten it here yet and it's already expired just because it takes longer than that to even get here. So, we freeze the cheese.Caitlin: The second secret to Antarctic cuisine: freeze it.Caitlin: This is a massive amount of meat.Adie Rosic: And you can feel it’s still pretty frozen.Caitlin: This is just one. There’s a tub full of them.Caitlin: Fortunately, there is no shortage of cold space here. And this is part of why eating expired food is okay. We all know that food rots if left out at room temperature.Freezing food slows the biological activity that makes it spoil.Arlo: So, what Caitlin’s trying to say is, freezing food makes food last longer.Caitlin: The challenge down here is actually thawing the food!Adie Rosic: We’ll have to turn on that heater because that much frozen food will bring down the temperature in this cooler to… so low that it won’t thaw.Caitlin: You actually have to heat your refrigerators in Antarctica?Adie Rosic: Yeah… exactly.Caitlin: In the McMurdo galley, lots of foods like vegetables and meat arrive frozen and are thawed when needed.Caitlin :Frozen Veggies.Caitlin: The third secret of Antarctic cooking: recycle food.Arlo: Yep, you heard that right. Recycle.Justin Hudson: Well, I mean, we are in Antarctica. It’s a harsh continent. We can’t just run down to whatever grocery store is nearby and pick up more product.Caitlin: So, you’re taking the leftovers and you’re just going to re-purpose them and put them right back out there?Justin Hudson: Re-purpose them, bring it back up to temperature, throw a little cheese on it. Makes it look like it’s hot, fresh and ready to go, and people eat it up.Caitlin: Add cheese! Just add cheese. That’s the trick.Caitlin: Sometimes the food is delicious.Caitlin: Oh, this is what I helped—what we saw them cooking in the back!Arlo: Sometimes, it kind of feels like… well, frozen then thawed then recycled food.Arlo: Ah, I think I’m good.Caitlin: I’m definitely getting some bread. Hey guys…Anonymous: HiCaitlin: I was okay with the vegetables for like the first few days. And then after about three days of frozen vegetables, you’re like… it’s really like eating your vegetables.Arlo: There was a line for spinach.Caitlin: Raw spinach.Arlo: Raw spinach. Like, there is never a line for spinach anywhere except here in Antarctica.Anonymous: It’s been a while since we had just green beans, though. It was just green beans for like seven days in a row.Caitlin: After a while it gets tiring, huh?Anonymous: You just lower your standards. You get used to it.Anonymous: You make do. And the galley does what they can with what they have.Caitlin: But there are some ways the McMurdo kitchen truly shines.Anonymous: When there’s chicken tenders for lunch I have a better day.Anonymous: Taco Tuesdays!Caitlin: What is it with the Chicken Tenders.Anonymous: They’re so good!Anonymous: What is it not with the Chicken Tenders?Arlo: Aside from chicken tenders… it is a carb factory.Caitlin: Vats of pasta are made every day. They have a bakery with four bakers.Fresh desserts and artisan bread are made from scratch.Arlo: And perhaps the biggest crowd pleaser:Arlo: McMurdo Pizza, this is Bill. How can I help you?Arlo: Pizza. They bake about 18,000 pizzas a year!Arlo: So how long have you been doing this?Pizza baker: Uh, so, this is my fourth season coming down.Tom Senty: Well, pizza—McMurdo pizza—we call it the McMurdo garnish. Because we have pizza fresh right there right as you walk by it. So, often people walk by and take a quick gander and they realize there's fresh hot pizza sitting right there so they may go over and grab one piece and slide it right on to the top of their plate with all of the food.Caitlin: And it’s delicious. It’s fresh-baked.Tom Senty: It’s Amazing! Yeah.Caitlin: Not frozen and re-thawed.Tom Senty: Oh no.Caitlin: Not expired!Tom Senty: We don't have room in our freezer to buy frozen pizzas.Caitlin: It was so good that I ate an embarrassing amount of pizza on this trip.Caitlin: Hey, is this the line to order a pizza? So, we’ll do pineapple on half, anchovies on the other half. Do you have whole wheat pizza dough?Caitlin: And it’s not the kind of food I usually eat at home. I am more of a fruits and veggies kind of girl. In summer, when the big c-17 planes can land on the ice, they can bring fresh food—or “freshies,” as their called. Stuff like veggies, eggs, and fruit. And it is coveted.Caitlin: We haven’t had any fresh food in—Gosh, you’re a pig! We haven’t had any fresh food for, what was it, a week?Zac: 10 days.Caitlin: 10 daysZac: Did we wash these?Caitlin: [shrugs]Anonymous: Time for a quick tour of camp.Arlo: While McMurdo is equipped with an industrial kitchen…Anonymous: Welcome to the Whillans Ice Stream.Arlo: …a lot of scientists are living and working at field sites far from the station. And for them, the food situation is a bit different.Anonymous: Hello MarinoAnonymous: You’re not recording, right?Anonymous: I am recording, in fact!Caitlin: Before they head out into the field…Bija Sass: So, down this aisle we have teas, and Gatorade.Caitlin: …they pass through McMurdo, and pick up everything they’ll need.Caitlin: Oh, peanut butter, that’s important. Very important.Bija Sass: Peanut butter and Jam. So, a lot of the condiments.Caitlin: Peanut butter and Jelly, that’s going to be my staple when I’m out there.Bija Sass: Yeah, so we have basically shelves and shelves of all the different types of food that folks would need to make a pretty good meal out in the field. So, there’s cereal, there’s chips, there’s crackers….Caitlin: And because they especially will be working and living out in the cold, they get access to this shelf...Bija Sass: I love the bumper bars, too. I don’t know if you all have had bumper bars.Caitlin: So, I’ve been saying to everybody, where I go, that I feel like kid in a candy shop. Now I’m like actually a kid in a candy shop here!Bija Sass: [Laughs] It’s all the bars! It’s all the bars! It’s all the sweet treats!Caitlin: I am not endorsing the product… but it’s very good!Arlo: They’re also provided frozen foods like meat. And depending on the size of the camp, they might get a small kitchen or even a grill.Arlo: I feel spoiled now.Shane Petch: Yeah, we’re super spoiled out here.Arlo: Often, the scientists have to cook their own food.Arlo: So what are other examples of recipes that you make?Shane Petch: In the past we’ve made a lot pizza on the grill. Lots of pasta. Pretty much anything with carbs and protein.Arlo: Hold on, hold on. You cook pasta on the grill?Shane Petch: No, not on the grill. Yeah, we have some nice Coleman camping stoves inside. Boil up a bunch of water. Yeah, it’s a pretty nice set up.Arlo: And they can eat pretty well…Arlo: Man, this whole time I thought you guys were suffering out here.Shane Petch: Oh yeah, I wouldn’t say we’re suffering, at all, no. It’s pretty nice.Jay Rotella: Shane! You’re the man. Thank you.Tom Senty: Food is moral. You know, morale equals food. Food equals morale. They go hand in hand. And that's always so true. Down here it goes a long way.Arlo: Food down here isn’t just about calories. More than ever, food makes people happy.Anonymous: It is fun to, yeah, make some fresh muffins and see a smile on someone’s face who was just staying up all night, working on their samplesCaitlin: And it brings people together. Both in the field…Arlo: So, my parents actually have a pizzeria back at home. So, I’m very used to this all-pizza-all-the-time diet.Anonymous: I’ll do seven days of pizza with you right now.Arlo: Deal!Anonymous: I’m in!Arlo: … And in McMurdo.Caitlin: And, the way to make friends…Jean Pennycook: Oh! [Laughter]Caitlin: …Especially when heading out into the field…Jean Pennycook: I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!Caitlin: …is to bring them some good food.Jean Pennycook: Ohhh! [Laughs]Caitlin: While not much grows in Antarctica today, that actually wasn't always the case!Antarctica used to be green! And filled with massive dinosaurs that feasted on lush vegetation. Want to know more? Check out NOVA’s Polar Extremes, and follow paleontologist Kirk Johnson as he uncovers the surprising climate history of the poles… and investigates how the polar past might hold the key to predicting our climate’s future.

Mount Erebus is one of Antarctica’s two active volcanoes and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Conveniently, Erebus’ summit is a mere 25 miles from McMurdo Station. After a helicopter trip to its flank, at altitude in -30° F conditions Caitlin & Arlo embark on foot and see firsthand how breathtaking (literally) Erebus is — and why an active volcano in a land of ice is a scientific wonder.

Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth.

Exploring Antarctica's Active Volcano Mt. Erebus

Antarctica is an otherworldly land of extremes. But perhaps nothing there is as extreme as Mount Erebus, one of Antarctica’s two active volcanoes and the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Conveniently, Erebus’ summit is a mere 25 miles from McMurdo Station, Antarctica’s largest research base.Hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez join Jessie Crain, a National Science Foundation Antarctic research support manager, on an exhilarating helicopter trip from McMurdo to Erebus’ summit and then land on its flanks. At altitude in -30° F conditions, they embark on foot and see firsthand how breathtaking (literally) Erebus is—and why an active volcano in a land of ice is a scientific wonder. Together, Caitlin and Arlo discover Dr. Suess-like ice towers (gas-emitting fumaroles), learn how Erebus came to be, and how it’s a window into Earth’s climatic past. And they (Arlo especially) experience the challenges and dangers that researchers face while working at Antarctica’s most epic extreme.

What’s covered in ice, soars 12,500 feet, and sometimes features a bubbling lava lake in its crater? Mount Erebus, of course.

Episode 9: What’s covered in ice, soars 12,500 feet, and sometimes features a bubbling lava lake in its crater? Mount Erebus, of course.

Exploring Antarctica’s Active Volcano Mount ErebusPublish Date: May 6, 2020Caitlin Saks: Whoa! There it is!Arlo Pérez: This is Mt. Erebus, in Antarctica. Jessie Crain: There is hot magma right, pretty much beneath our feet.Caitlin: The southernmost active volcano in the world.Jessie Crain: So it's this pretty hulking mass of a volcano. It just makes you get a sense of how small you are in the grand scheme of things.Arlo: It's the most extreme Antarctic Extreme.Caitlin: Mt. Erebus is located on Ross Island—just a few miles from the largest research station in Antarctica, McMurdo Station.Arlo: Almost everywhere we went, the volcano loomed over us. Caitlin: Ross Island is a volcanic island made up of jagged rock, treacherous glaciers, and cracks that can be hard to find.Caitlin: So, flying is the only practical way to get there. Arlo: But...that doesn’t mean it’s easy.Arlo: We’ve been delayed over and over and over again.Caitlin: We’ve been here two weeks trying to get this flight off.Arlo: Conditions have to be perfect to fly up to Mt. Erebus, because we do not want to get stuck up there in bad weather. The remnants of what can happen if we do are still visible.Caitlin: How high are we now?Pilot: We’re at 12,000.Caitlin: Almost there!Caitlin: The volcano is twelve-and-a-half thousand feet high. So we use canisters of oxygen to help us breathe.Arlo: When I open the window to take photographs, my fingers go numb. Extreme cold at this altitude is no joke!Caitlin: At Erebus’s summit is a crater billowing with gas—mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide from the volcano.Caitlin: Did you see any bubbling lava?Arlo: No bubbling lava. A lot of vapor. Caitlin: Sometimes you can spot a bubbling lava lake. It’s one of only eight volcanoes in the world that has one.And this is one of the reasons scientists want to come here.Caitlin: Today, we’re landing on the flanks of the volcano with Jessie Crane, who’s spent three seasons studying volcanic gases on Mt. Erebus.Caitlin: Negative 30 degrees, oh my god. This is probably the coldest weather I’ve ever been in in my entire life!Caitlin: The first thing I notice when I get out of the helicopter…Caitlin: My snot is freezing.Jessie Crain: And so is your hair.Caitlin: Oh gosh. Is it gonna like, break off?Arlo: When I got off the helicopter, the first thing I noticed was that something...wasn’t right. I felt dizzy. I started to have tunnel vision, and I was completely zoned out.Caitlin: At first, I thought Arlo was just spellbound by the view or something. It took me a little while to realize he was actually suffering from altitude sickness.Arlo: I couldn't think. I was just dazed. Caitlin: And we’re not even at the summit, where much of the science is done.Jessie Crain: It's not so bad being up there, but you have to hike another 2000 feet, uphill…Caitlin: At altitude.Jessie Crain: At altitude, in the cold. So it can be pretty tough.Caitlin: Turns out, getting to the crater rim can be treacherous for another reason, too…Jessie Crain: It actually has pretty regular Strombolian eruptions. That's where a volcano just builds up some pressure on the inside and then it goes ‘pop!’ and it blows a bunch of lava out the top of it.Caitlin: Strombolian eruptions get their name from the Stromboli volcano, in Italy, which regularly has this type of eruption. They’re relatively small eruptions and release the pressure from inside the volcano. But these small eruptions are also what keeps McMurdo safe, since pressure is released in small spurts instead of big disasters.Jessie Crain: It's not building up a ton of pressure so it's not like Mt. St. Helens. It's just off- gassing a little bit at a time and you can see from looking around that it has had eruptive periods that have lava flow associated with them. That's how the volcano was built—one lava flow at a time.Caitlin: While the most visible activity is at the crater, we’re actually standing right next to another scientific marvel.Jessie Crain: Sort of like a hollow, upside down icicle. These are fumaroles, we call them ice towers.Caitlin: Fumaroles are normal volcanic features. On most volcanoes, like this one in Hawaii, they look just like steam seeping out of the ground.Jessie Crain: You get all of that gas, water vapor and carbon dioxide, coming up through the side of the volcano. But here, when it hits the air, that steam freezes.Caitlin: These towers are fascinating, because they’re castles for exotic bacteria that can survive in the dark, steamy, and nutrient-poor environment.Caitlin: It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.Jessie Crain: It does look like something out of Dr. Suess! Yeah they're crazy, and every one of them sort of has its own personality.Arlo: It seems crazy that anything can live here, in these high altitude volcanic ice towers. But it also seems pretty weird that in this land of ice, there’s an active volcano. How did this volcano come to be?Jessie Crain: We're sitting on top of a large feature called the Terror Rift. And that's the source of the volcanism. That’s why there’s magma coming up near the surface and feeding this volcano.Caitlin: There's actually a rift zone that runs across Western Antarctica. A rift is where a continent is stretching apart and thinning, which allows hot magma to come close to the surface. That's why there’s a volcano here that’s emitting carbon dioxide. No matter how cold it gets on the surface of earth -- the inside of the planet is still hot. And that’s a really good thing, because many scientists think that hundreds of millions of years ago, the whole world was covered in ice.Caitlin: But because volcanoes like this one continue to churn away under the ice, they finally put out enough CO2 to heat up the planet again. So, this place is not only spectacular to visit and study today, but it’s also kind of like a window into our planet’s past. Arlo: And, for me, this was a glimpse into just how extreme the conditions can be for the scientists who come here. Fortunately, I recovered pretty quickly once I got back in the helicopter.Caitlin: So we just got back from probably what was the most amazing helicopter flight of either of our lives…Arlo: No no no…Caitlin: Our entire life?Arlo: Not the most exciting helicopter ride of our lives. The most exciting moment of our lives! This is the greatest, we’ve peaked. This is it.

To find Adélie penguins, Caitlin and Arlo set out on a quest to Cape Royds, home to the southernmost Adélie penguin colony in the world. There, they learn about why people love these black and white birds and how Antarctica’s penguin populations are indicators of climate change. But non-ideal conditions and gusting winds put a damper on their plans.

When in Antarctica, meeting penguins is an absolute must. But it’s not always easy.

Antarctica’s Penguins Taught Us Surprising Life Lessons

Finding—and filming—penguins was hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez’s top priority during their month-long stay at McMurdo Station. With four species of penguin living in Antarctica, including the Adélie, the most widely-distributed penguin species in the world, tracking down these waddling wonders might sound simple.To find Adélies, Caitlin and Arlo set out on a quest to Cape Royds, home to the southernmost Adélie penguin colony in the world. There, they meet with expert Jean Pennycook to learn about why people love these black and white birds and how Antarctica’s penguin populations are indicators of climate change. But non-ideal conditions and gusting winds put a damper on their plans (and the penguins they do come across seem to be either busy pooping or getting busy with each other). Caitlin and Arlo come face-to-face with the harsh reality of working on Earth’s remotest continent: Antarctica, and its extremes, can complicate even the best-laid plans.Will Caitlin and Arlo persevere and capture penguins on film before they must leave and head back to the United States? To keep their jobs at NOVA, they just might have to.

Episode 10: When in Antarctica, meeting penguins is an absolute must. But it’s not always easy.

O Penguin, Where Art Thou?Publish Date: May 20, 2020Arlo Pérez: Penguins—they are like the mascots of Antarctica. Because, everyone loves penguins. Well… almost everyone.Caitlin Saks: I don't really get what’s so great about penguins. I’m just going to say it—and I know, like, three billion people probably hate me right now—but I really just don't get what the big deal with penguins is. They’re just kind of like birds that don’t fly, and I hear they kinda stink. So... now we’re going to see the penguins.[laughter]Caitlin: Tonight, we’re heading to the Cape Royds penguin colony, a helicopter flight away. This is our first big excursion away from McMurdo Station.Caitlin: When I first started working on this series, going to the penguins was non-negotiable. I mean, it was priority one. My boss would fire me if we did not get footage of penguins on this trip.Caitlin: Cape Royds is home to the southernmost Adélie penguin colony in the world, and it’s where a few thousand Adélie penguins nest.Arlo: Not only is this where we plan to get some amazing penguin footage, but it’s also where we’ll finally get a chance to camp outside in the Antarctic wilderness.Caitlin: Hey Arlo!Arlo: I’m excited about getting there, I’m excited about seeing them, but I’m also really excited about sleeping.Caitlin: You’re not gonna sleep tonight.Arlo: Oh, I am. I am. Doesn't matter how, I am.Arlo: So uh... it’s currently 6am. As you can see the wind really, really picked up. Yeah, the idea of filming in this is so unappealing. So it's going to be a **** of a day, ugh.NOVA: Hello!Caitlin: Hey!NOVA: Hi!!!Arlo: It's cold. [laughter]Caitlin: Very cold!Caitlin: This is our first time calling back to the NOVA office.Julia Cort: I gotta ask, was that your first helicopter ride?Arlo: Yes!Caitlin: No, for me.Arlo: Unfortunately, we don’t have good news to share. We’re… stuck inside.Caitlin: But it’s been gusting to like 40-45mph winds, so we’re hoping that it quiets down so we can actually go film with the penguins. Can we introduce you to our friends who are hosting us here? Is that alright guys?Jean Pennycook: Welcome to Cape Royds and our hut. This is our humble home. I live here for three months every year…Caitlin: This is Jean Pennycook.Jean Pennycook: …And um, it's a little rustic but this is where the penguins are, so this is where I’m most happy.Caitlin: She’s a penguin expert, and runs an outreach program for kids around the world—which is why she gets the good internet.Jean Pennycook: We come here every year from about October to the end of January, and we monitor, study these birds…Caitlin: Studying penguins in such a remote and harsh environment is not easy. And it takes a special kind of person to be up to the task, someone who’s okay with living in this place.Jean Pennycook: So I can’t wash my hair, maybe you can tell, and I can’t wash my clothes, maybe they can tell. So it’s very rustic out here, but this is living in Antarctica.Caitlin: So we’re hoping that the wind dies down enough in the next hour for us to get out there and get something.The Boss: Do you know what the temperature is with the wind chill?Caitlin: It’s negative 10 Celsius.The Boss: That’s not that cold!Arlo: Without wind chill.The Boss: That’s not that... that’s just like 18 degrees below 32…Caitlin: And then there’s 40 mph winds.The Boss: Ok, you guys, come on. Toughen up! [laughter]Arlo: Finally—we catch a break. The winds die down just enough for us to venture out. We walk the 15 minutes it takes to get to the colony, and it’s kind of brutal. But now… we are on a mission.Caitlin: Here’s what we’re imagining: a hero penguin—being cute. Beautiful background, preferably with some ice in it. An expert explaining what’s going on, ‘Penguins do not eat pizza…’Arlo: Basically, something like this:Clip: A returning adult may spend hours looking for its chick among such a crowd. Parent and chick can recognize one another’s voice.Arlo: But instead… it’s too windy to hear each other talk.Caitlin: That picturesque ice near the ocean is hopelessly far away. Keeping our camera stable is… impossible.Arlo: And these penguins are way more interested in, shall we say, “building their nests” than being cute. And then, to add insult to injury…Radio: We got some weather moving in.Arlo: …We get the call that more bad weather is rolling in.Jean Pennycook: Helo Ops just called. They said you have to come right now.Arlo: A helicopter is on its way to pick us up.Caitlin: We have to toss our plans out the window and return to the hut… fast.Arlo: But…by the time we get back to the hut, the winds have picked up, which means the helicopter… is delayed.Caitlin: Fortunately…Caitlin: They kind of smelled bad. [laughter]Caitlin: …That gives us a bit of time to talk penguins with Jean.Jean Pennycook: Well, wait till you go home and you’ll smell the same. [laughter]Jean Pennycook: When you’re around the birds you kind of absorb some of it. So what we’re looking at when you go down there… is 10,000 years of penguin guano.Jean Pennycook: It’s not dirt, it’s penguin guano. And it has built up over the last 10,000 years when this colony has been here.Arlo: So… we were literally walking and filming in a landscape… of penguin poop.Caitlin: This colony of penguins has been monitored for only about 60 of it’s 10,000 year existence. So there are still a lot of questions to be answered.Caitlin: Why is this important? To study penguins?Jean Pennycook: Penguins are very important to study because their environment is very fragile. There are no animals that live further into the hostility of Antarctica than these do.Caitlin: This population at Cape Royds is actually pretty healthy.Arlo: But elsewhere, like in the Palmer Station area of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Adélie penguins aren’t faring nearly as well. Here, the population has declined by about 90% since the 1970s. And a NASA study projects that by the end of the century, more than half of the Adélie penguin colonies in Antarctica could be in decline.Caitlin: In a lot of ways, penguins in Antarctica are like the canaries in the coal mine. They are telling us about the health of our natural world,and it isn’t looking good. This is why Jean’s outreach work is so important.Jean Pennycook: If we could use penguins as the conveyor of information about Antarctica and climate change, then they’re a good one to do, because rocks just don’t do it. People aren’t as interested in rocks. [laughter]Caitlin: Hey, hey, I have a background in geology.Jean Pennycook: I mean rocks are cool, but penguins are the most engaging bird by far.Caitlin: Why is that? What is it about penguins?Jean Pennycook: This bird is anatomically very similar to us. They have their vertical column like this, and their heads are perpendicular, just like us. Their wings are down at their sides, like our arms. So they mirror us in much of their form and in their antics and their walking around, so we kind of identify with them.Arlo: So what you’re saying in a way is, that we like them because they look like derpy humans.Jean Pennycook: [laughter] Well! Charlie Chaplin thought so!Arlo: Charlie Chaplin was a comedy legend from a century ago. And he was constantly reminded that his signature walk looked just like a penguin shuffle. But he claimed that he wasn’t actually trying to imitate a penguin.Caitlin: Just as I was actually coming to appreciate these little birds… our time at Cape Royds runs out.Arlo: We only got about 15 minutes to film with the penguins. And instead of a picturesque icy landscape, just a lot of penguin poop. I mean, let’s be honest, this…Clip: To raise a family, in one of the most unforgiving...Arlo: ...Isn’t this.Caitlin: Our plans were kinda ruined by the weather. And to me, it feels like... failure.Arlo: After that trip, Antarctica keeps us busy. And so we kinda give up on the penguins.Caitlin: But over the month-long stay, we meet a lot of scientists who work in this harsh environment, day in and day out…Paul Cziko: So this is 28 degree Fahrenheit water. It’s right at its freezing point.Caitlin: …Like Paul Cziko, who studies Antarctic fish.Caitlin: Can this, like, permanently hurt me?Paul Cziko: No.Caitlin: He catches them from this dive hole in McMurdo. And while attempting to see how much pain we can tolerate…Caitlin: It hurts, it hurts! It hurts so much!Caitlin: …He tells me something kind of… enlightening.Caitlin: So you mentioned something interesting in the field, you said you fail a lot.Paul Cziko: Yeah. We fail all the time. You just have to work through it. And you learn over the years things that don’t work and things that do work. And you learn that, you know, you can’t get everything done that you expect to get done in a season. You never do, never ever.Caitlin: I’ve kinda noticed that myself, coming down here. Even though it’s not a science project, it’s a media project—that…everything is just a lot harder here.Paul Cziko: It’s really challenging to do stuff down here. So you just have to be really strong inside and just keep pushing through.Caitlin: By coming to Antarctica, we’re not just reporting on the science. We’re putting ourselves in the shoes of scientists.Britney Schmidt: The most important thing is to recognize that failures aren’t really failing, right? They’re a way to rescope the problem. Or a way to learn something new, a new way to approach a problem. And if you can do that, that really matters.Caitlin: Part of the scientific process down here is learning to contend with the environment. And it isn’t just how to survive the cold. It’s how to persevere when all your carefully wrought plans are destroyed by a storm.Arlo: This is torture.Caitlin: Or how to work with a small team of strangers when you’re 9,000 miles away from home, and can’t sleep.Jean Pennycook: Its vastness. Its isolation. Its hostility. This place touches you at the soul level. I don’t think that anyone can come to Antarctica and go home the same person that they were.Arlo: And by the end of the trip, we realize… we’ve got some unfinished business.Zachary Fink: So you wanna review the plan?Caitlin: Yeah! Arlo, where are we going?Arlo: Find some penguins!Caitlin: What day is it?Arlo: The last day!!!Arlo: We can’t just leave it at Cape Royds. We need penguins.Caitlin: We’ve basically done everything there is to do, in this area, except find penguins.Arlo: Yep.Caitlin: Well, we kinda found them.Arlo: No, no, no. Find the real penguins.Caitlin: On ice. And by the water.Caitlin: We found a penguin! There it is! One lone ranger, Adélie penguin. You can’t even see it on the GoPro.

In the premiere episode of Antarctic Extremes, join hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez as they follow in the footsteps of the brave scientists that have made McMurdo Station their research base and second home. 5 days, 12,000 miles, and 7 time zones with hundreds of pounds of camera gear in tow, Caitlin and Arlo temporarily leave their day jobs and go on a journey to the bottom of the world.

It’s the most remote natural lab on Earth, which means getting there is no easy feat.

Antarctica: Journey to the Bottom of the Earth

In the premiere episode of Antarctic Extremes, join hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez as they follow in the footsteps of the brave scientists that have made McMurdo Station, an otherworldly Antarctic outpost, their research base and their second home. Five days, 12,000 miles, and seven time zones with hundreds of pounds of camera gear in tow, Caitlin and Arlo temporarily leave their day jobs as NOVA producers and go on a mind-boggling journey to the bottom of the world. They fly halfway across the planet, pick up extreme cold-weather gear (and gloves made specially for wiping away snot), and learn to withstand the -50° F Antarctic autumn temperatures. But as they touch down on Antarctic ice in a massive U.S. Air Force C-17, Caitlin and Arlo realize their epic journey is far from over.

Antarctica: It’s the home of penguins, seals, and a weird, rusty-looking glacial waterfall called Blood Falls. It’s the most remote natural laboratory on Earth—which means getting there is no easy feat.

Episode 1: Antarctica: It’s the home of penguins, seals, and a weird, rusty-looking glacial waterfall called Blood Falls. It’s the most remote natural laboratory on Earth—which means getting there is no easy feat.

Antarctica: Journey to the Bottom of the EarthPublished: January 29, 2020Arlo Pérez: So, I think Caitlin and I are being hazed for some reason. They’ve got us cleaning the snow mobiles with a screwdriver.Caitlin Saks: I can’t really feel my hands.Caitlin: We are in Antarctica… and this, is not what we expected.Arlo: It’s a strange place, that’s both familiar...Caitlin: …and completely alien. You can sleep, but it’s never dark.Arlo: You can instant message, if you know how to use a pager.Caitlin: You can’t grow food… but you can call for a pizza.Caitlin: So, we’ll do pineapple and half anchovies on the other half.Arlo: That’s right, 24/7 pizza, here, in the world’s most remote natural laboratory.Caitlin: Home to penguins and seals.Arlo: A weird glacier that seems to spew blood.Caitlin: And a fiery active volcano. All of which we plan to see. But right now, I’m stuck under a snowmobile, wondering how I ended up here... With this impossibly upbeat guy.Arlo: Wooo!Caitlin: Normally, I’m nowhere near here… I’m here as a science documentary producer for NOVA.Kirk Johnson: What powerful forces drove the poles to such extremes?Caitlin: We’re working on an epic special called Polar Extremes about the climate history of our planet’s poles.Kirk Johnson: Find out the true power of ice. This is amazing out here!Caitlin: It got us wondering… how do scientists work all this stuff out? What does it take to live and work in these crazy remote regions? Well, there’s only one way to find out. Arlo—we’re going to Antarctica.Arlo: What?Taxi Driver: Let’s go.Arlo: I make web videos for NOVA and this is my first field assignment: Follow the trail of scientists to the most remote place on Earth... and stay there for a month! Sounds fun. First stop—New Zealand. Where everyone heading as south as you can sail gears up for the cold.Caitlin: It has got to be the biggest winter closet in the world. Stuffed with polar gear lent out to people like us heading to Antarctica.Clothing Distribution Center Employee: They’re probably rated to about minus 40, minus 50.Arlo: 50 below? I am not built for that. Living 16 years in Mexico doesn’t really give you an experience with snow.Caitlin: Getting this gear is a rite of passage for traveling to Antarctica.Arlo: Giant red parka?Caitlin: Check.Arlo: Clown boots?Caitlin: Check.Caitlin: That’s what this is for?!Arlo: Snot wiper gloves?Caitlin: Check and check.Arlo: Bring on the white stuff.Arlo: There are no commercial flights where we’re going, so we get to fly… in this: a US Air Force C-17. “Operation Deep Freeze” provides transport to the continent for the US Antarctic Program. It’s much more than just a flight—it’s a portal to another realm. Caitlin: They just told us to turn off our electronic devices.Arlo: We’re about to go back in time to the 1990’s.  Caitlin: Everyone going to the ice bundles up in the cargo hold. There are no windows, so the only view is this curious looking polar equipment. But when we head up to the cockpit, we catch our first glimpse of Antarctica! Patchy sea ice gives way to desolate, snow covered mountains.Arlo: Soon we land on what feels like another planet. As the C-17 doors open, polar air blasts in. You can actually see it. We step out onto the ice, and in the distance there are these monstrous vehicles.Caitlin: To me, it’s a scene straight out of Star Wars. Like I’ve just stepped onto Hoth. We’ve arrived… and it is truly awesome.Elaine Hood: Okay, everybody has to have seatbelts on.Arlo: We’re met by Elaine Hood. Elaine Hood: Speed limit is 15 miles per hour.Arlo: She takes us to the top of a hill overlooking our new home: McMurdo Station, the US Antarctic Program’s base of operations.Elaine Hood: The station was built in 1955/56 by the US Navy. It’s the southernmost point on the face of the Earth where you can sail a ship. But right now, this flat white that you are looking at is the annual sea ice.Caitlin: Elaine is more than just our tour guide…Elaine Hood: Follow the umbrella!Caitlin: She’s basically our Antarctic mom. She makes sure that we wear our gloves and hats.Arlo: That we know where our pencils and our panties are.Arlo: Elaine shows us the ropes. And helps us start to understand our new world.Elaine Hood: So, that’s what I do.Arlo: She tells us McMurdo is kind of a hopping off point for expeditions into the deep field.Caitlin: We are so excited to get out thereand explore some of the wildest parts of Antarctica with scientists. But… we can’t. For now, we’re stuck in this bizarre outpost.Arlo: It’s got like this post-apocalyptic vibe going on for it. It feels like you’re in another world.Caitlin: McMurdo has 105 buildings with about 900 people in the summer. Just like the scientists, we’re given a lab space to set up shop. And like everyone who arrives here for the first time… before we can do what we came here to do, we’ve got to learn how to live down here. Arlo: And it is a strange place to live.Caitlin: It’s kind of like college. You have dorms, you have roommates. It kind of looks just like college.Arlo: But the kind of classes we’re taking are ‘snowmobiles 101’.Snowmobile Instructor: Who’s never ridden a snowmobile before?Arlo: And intro to not falling down an ice crack.Sea Ice Safety Instructor: What’s going to happen when the crack starts moving underneath the snow?Caitlin: Even though a lot of this is pretty cool… the reality of just how extreme this environment is, starts to sink in.Caitlin: Have you ever had to rescue someone who’s screwed up with their GPS?John Loomis: Yeah. We’ve had to go get people who used the GPS inappropriately and got themselves into a situation where they got lost. And there’s also been people who have been lost in white outs and basically died of exposure. It is a harsh continent. Caitlin: It’s a little windy today!Caitlin: It really hits us: there are a lot of ways we can die down here. Dennis Haskell: The weather can turn in a matter of minutes and be a full blizzard. Wind chill factor to negative 50 degrees and you can get frostbite super easy. Caitlin: While in college it felt like my life depended on doing well in class. Now, it actually does. The lives of others do too. Arlo: And it’s easy to forget even the simple things.Arlo: Mac Ops, we have four vehicles and our ETA is 1600 hours…Caitlin: OverArlo: Over.Person on radio: Copy that.Caitlin: When I first got down here, I felt like I was on top of the world. But now it starts to feel a bit more like the bottom of the world. Arlo: Nothing seems to be going for us. Training and bad weather have kept us stuck near the station. And we can’t even claim the continent for NOVA. Because the one time we want that biting wind to blow… it doesn’t.Zac: That’s the saddest NOVA flag possible.Caitlin: We’ve been in Antarctica for a week. The sun has never set… but the time we have here is slipping away. I’m exhausted, disoriented, and I feel like we’re just stuck in a closet checking camera gear. Home is a world away, and we’re just a small team of three. We haven’t filmed a single scientific sequence.I’m starting to think… I’m not sure I can do this. But then I realize... this feeling… is totally normal.Britney Schmidt: When I got here I thought it's miserable in the most inspiring way. Being away from your family working on really hard stuff that no one's ever tried to do before. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in the most beautiful place I could imagine.Arlo: We are surrounded by some of the most remarkable people, who have all gone through this.Paul Cziko: It's really challenging to do stuff down here. And because of that there's still a lot of unexplored things and unanswered questions and that's really cool. So it is really a frontier down here.Caitlin: We came here to join them at this frontier, as they conduct groundbreaking research.Peter Doran: SkyTEM can see hundreds of meters into the ground.Arlo: We will soar through majestic valleys that scientists use as an analogue for other planets.Jill Mikucki: Perhaps it’s like a deep ground water system that might exist on Mars.Caitlin: We’ll plunge to the depths of the icy ocean with a robot that aims to help figure out how fast sea level will rise. Britney Schmidt: It’s incredibly unstable. The grounding line is rapidly retreating.Arlo: We’ll meet baby sealsand learn how they survive in this harsh environment. Jay Rotella: They’re under the ice that we’re standing on right now.Arlo: And investigate a mysterious glacier in a part of Antarctica that isn’t covered in ice.Peter Doran: Blood falls is a bit of an obsession for a lot of people.Caitlin: We’ll fly to the top of an active volcano to get a glimpse of what our planet was like hundreds of millions of years ago. Caitlin: My snot is freezing.Jessie Crain: And so is your hair.Arlo: We’ve brought a 360 camera along, so when we meet the penguins… you will too! Caitlin: We will plant that nova flag!Arlo: And we’ll meet the people who make the science possible.Peter Doran: There's this really tight knit community. It's kind of like a weird cold icy family. I still get excited every time coming down. And I get excited bringing new people and exposing them to that experience and watching through their eyes what it's like because it really is an amazing experience.Caitlin: We aren’t simply following the trail of scientists… we’re in their shoes. Literally. Which means…we have got to get these snowmobiles out. Caitlin: I brought some extra batteries. And spoons. Spoon?Arlo: I’ll take a spoon. Arlo: Antarctica… here we come.

In this 10-part series, NOVA reporters Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez join scientists and research support personnel to discover some of Antarctica's coolest features—and figure out the challenges of everyday life at the bottom of the Earth.

Journey to Antarctica in a new digital series from NOVA and PBS Digital Studios, and discover what it takes to do science in Earth’s remotest natural laboratory.

Journey to Antarctica in a new digital series from NOVA and PBS Digital Studios, and discover what it takes to do science in Earth’s remotest natural laboratory.

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