Fifteen months in an icebox

Empty, frozen lands stretch as far as the eye can see. The wind rages, temperatures plummet. In a ship softly bobbing in the arctic waters, a biologist adds the following entry to his log: "To reach this state of grace and harmony, some sacrifice is required. For the members of our expedition, the price to pay is measured in months of isolation, far from loved ones and kept from a normal life."



Jean Lemire wrote that entry in January 2006, only four months into a 15 month trip, during which he and 12 other people lived on a 51-metre long sailboat and shot 600 hours of film to capture how climate change is changing the Antarctic.

The Sedna IV - a three-masted sailboat with a range of 10,000 nautical miles, and fitted with high-definition filmmaking equipment and a cutting room - set off in September 2005 from the port at Cap-aux-Meules, in the Magdalen islands, Quebec, sailed through the Northwest passage, stopped in Buenos Aires, worked its way around Cape Horn, then reached the Antarctic Peninsula in January, 2006.

The Montreal-based documentary filmmaker's crew included biologist Pascale Otis, who studied avian adaptation to cold, and Ricardo Sahade, from the Universidad de C￳rdoba, Argentina, who studied changes in the benthic community.

Lemire set out to visit every research station on the Antarctic Peninsula. After talking with all the scientists working there over the summer, Lemire realized that everybody was leaving for the winter, when temperatures fall, angry winds swirl, and sunlight disappears. But Lemire wanted to see how climate change affects the region's winter, so in March 2006, as scientists abandoned their research stations for the cruel winter, the Sedna IV dropped anchor.

During an interview with Lemire, a handsome and friendly person at ease with telling a story, he calls the decision to stay through the winter "the big challenge." But very revealing -- "We were supposed to be stuck in the ice," says Lemire, "but we had no ice" due to the rise in temperature. That changes everything in the region, he says, since seals need the ice to give birth and other animals that normally leave because of the ice stayed all winter. "Some species, like Adelie penguins, are paying a big price for this change."

Lemire says he was very surprised to see the lack of ice, which only arrived very late in August. "All around, it was open water," he says.

Open water got very lonely. "After one year, time was passing very slowly," says Lemire, who was by then missing his friends and family. "But the most difficult part was June and July, with long nights of 20 hours of darkness."

But one long night was broken with dangerous excitement. On May 8, 2006, a violent storm burst the mooring line of the Sedna IV. Hours later, new waves broke the six port-side mooring lines and forced the crew to evacuate the bay by cutting the starboard mooring lines and steering the Sedna IV between the rocky shoals of the harbor. The captain had left the boat once it anchored, so Lemire had to sail the boat to safety himself. "We were very lucky," says Lemire.

Born in Drummondville, Quebec, Lemire studied biology as an undergrad at Sherbrooke University and was in the Ph.D. program at Laval University. "I was supposed to finish my thesis but never found the time to write it," says Lemire. "I started to do research and started a parallel life in the movie business."

In 1987, Lemire began a move toward documentary filmmaking when he formed the company Les Productions Cin￩-Bio, followed by Glacialis Productions Inc. in 2001. His films and productions include Marine Mammals Mission (1994), Encounters with the Whales of the St. Laurence (1996), The Last Frontier (1998) and Arctic Mission (2004).

Last week, Lemire, 45, received a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Environment Awards. Eventually, his footage from the Antarctica trip will make its way into a feature film and television series.

"I'm a biologist and I wanted to be able to become what other scientists call me now, the missing link between science and the public," Lemire says. "Instead of doing the science myself, I bring scientists with me and try to make stories about what they are doing and what they are thinking," he says. "And it is through this emotion that we can really touch the public."

David Secko
mail@the-scientist.com

Images: A penguin visit, the first hockey match in the Antarctic, the group gathers around the ice, an iceberg reflected, seals.

Links with this article

The Antarctic Mission, Ship's Log, January 12th 2006
http://www.radio-canada.ca/sedna/index.html?p=/eng/mission/contact.php

Pascale Otis
http://www.radio-canada.ca/sedna/index.html?p=/eng/crew/otis.php

Glacialis Productions Inc.
http://www.glacialis.tv

Canadian Environment Awards 2007
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/cea2007/home.asp

E. Zielinska, "Extreme science caught on film," The Scientist, January 19, 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/42343