Original subtitles

Okay, it's freezing.

We are making our way to nine-zero-zero-zero.

I'm gonna try to find the North Pole.

Look at that.

Look how crazy that is.

I don't know how it's okay to let me get off the boat

and walk on the ocean.

Oh, jeez.

At least they'll find my body in 1,000 years.

Come on. I'ma find this.

There is a geographic North Pole,

but it's a difficult thing to find

because the ice is moving.

It felt like I was chasing the North Pole.

Ninety-seven, ninety-seven. Ninety-eight!

Ninety-five.

So it's 98 there, hold on.

I set out for 100 days...

and here I am looking for 90 degrees north.

There it is. The North Pole.

Whoo!

Whoo-hoo-hoo!

Here I am...

top of the world.

North Pole, baby!

There's not many people who have been from Pole to Pole.

To actually reach the North Pole

was a delicious moment of accomplishment.

But I knew we weren't finished.

Because my final goal wasn't to just get to the pole.

It was to dive under it.

What was I thinking when I said yes to that?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

our odyssey across the globe is coming to an end.

I set out on this journey because my mentor Dr. Counter told me

that the answers to everything important

are out at the edges of our world.

And, man, was he right.

It's been an incredible journey.

We've discovered deadly creatures which could save millions of lives.

That's insane.

We've learned of rivers in the sky.

We recorded a language on the verge of extinction

and explored the secret of happiness in a land above the clouds.

And now the final leg

of our journey.

I'm putting my neck on the line

for a discovery that could eclipse all of that.

We're landing, we're landing. Let me get my stuff.

Ah.

- Hey. - Hey!

Allie. How you doing?

-Nice to meet you. -Good. How are you?

- Hold on. - Let's get in there.

Thank you for coming all the way up here.

Uh, no. This is fantabulous.

It is a very beautiful place.

You know how to pick locations.

-For sure. -I do. I do.

I'm very, very excited for you, 'cause it gets better.

I'm ready. Let the games begin.

Follow me. This way.

My name is Allison Fong,

and I'm an oceanographer and sea ice ecologist.

So, you know, this moment in history,

our planet is facing a very big crisis.

By burning fossil fuels,

we created an abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...

that is warming the earth

and causing all sorts of extreme events.

And so Will and I are embarking

on a scientific expedition to the North Pole

to see if there's anything that we can do about it.

There used to be tons of snow covering these mountains.

Doesn't look like there's a lot of snow here now.

That's kind of the problem.

I believe that living under the ice at the North Pole,

there are some of the most efficient organisms

on planet Earth

at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

If my theories are correct,

then this could be a breakthrough for climate change.

-Alright. -Alright, here we go.

Headed north.

There we go.

The only way to do this kind of work

is to dive under that ice and collect samples.

But first, we've got to get there.

There she is!

That's our ride to the top of the earth.

That is a big, giant boat.

She's a big icebreaker, and that's what we need where we're going.

Yeah, for me an icebreaker, it's like, girl, your feet must be tired

'cause you've been running through my mind all day long.

How's that? I hope, I hope that's a better--

I hope that's a better icebreaker than mine.

The ambition of the entire journey is gigantic.

You know, it was like, wow.

We're on a scientific mission to help save the planet.

Oh, thank you.

And if somebody offered me that script as a movie,

I'd be like, come on, man. Come on, really?

Send that to Matt Damon, 'cause he's smart.

Like, Matt's gonna have to make that.

Welcome onboard.

Nice to meet you.

Welcome in my, my office, the best office in the world.

Right, so this is my first time on an icebreaker.

How, how does it break the ice? I'm not nervous.

I'm not nervous, I'm just asking. How does the ship break the ice?

We use the weight of the hull.

Thirty thousand tons,

and we jump above the ice and we break the ice

to optimize this route to the North Pole.

Alright, so you feel confident that crashing the ship into the ice

is going to be successful and you'll get us to the North Pole.

Yeah, but you know, which is very important

is don't take it for granted.

We're entering a different world.

Only ice and weather will decide.

I'm just breaking down this mission,

getting a sense of what we're doing.

And so, essentially,

um, the captain, you see the captain?

That's the captain right there. You see, right there.

He's just gonna slam the boat on purpose into the ice for a week,

um, till we get to the North Pole,

and he's pretty sure that the boat will be fine.

And Allie thinks it's a good idea for us to get out of the boat

and scuba dive under the North Pole.

Between the three of us,

one of us has made a really bad life decision

and I'm not sure which one of us it is.

Welcome on board. Uh, my name is Eli.

- Eli. Um... - Yeah.

I wanna learn my way around the boat, so...

Alright.

Here we have which deck we're on and which main vertical zone.

- Okay. - Some of these zones

can be locked away if there's water intrusion

or something like that.

- Oh! Water intrusion. - Yeah.

That's like when you're on a plane,

and they say, "In case of a water landing..."

It's like, yo, there ain't no water landing.

What that-- That means you crashed.

What do, what do these things mean? What are all of these?

So it's basically the documents for abandoning.

Everything on the walls is about if the damn boat crash.

Damn, where is the fun stuff on the damn boat?

Okay. So I've been to, to the South Pole, I've been to Ecuador.

I fought anaconda,

and now I'm about to explore the dessert tray.

Now, this is how exploration is supposed to be.

I was telling them from the beginning.

I was saying, "This is how we're supposed to be doing it."

I'm gonna see if that's strawberry or raspberry.

That's what I need to know.

This is gonna be the first part of my expedition.

This is your captain

speaking from the bridge.

We are just arriving at the edge of the sea ice.

We, uh, we ran out of ocean.

Whoo! Whoo. That was a big one.

To watch the ship break the ice...

It's not little ice.

It's from the size of a car

to giant apartment-sized pieces of ice.

That is so thick.

It's really, really loud.

And it's rocking the ship.

Seeing the ice made it more real for me.

It made me realize just how crazy this expedition really is.

Diving under ice is new for Will,

but it's also new for me.

I've dove in warmer waters, temperate waters that are cold,

but never this cold, and certainly not frozen.

Growing up in Rhode Island, we have tons of coastline.

So the ocean was just a natural place for me to be.

I love understanding how things work.

And so science was a way of taking my natural curiosity

and investigating the world around me.

When I told my parents I was gonna be a scientist

and not a medical doctor, they're like, "Why would you do that?"

I was like, "There's something beautiful and amazing

and awe-inspiring in the power of science."

And so I thought to myself, "What can I do?"

Where is it that I can really make a difference?

And it's microbes.

Because microbes are the unsung heroes of our planet.

They're what makes this planet unique in our universe.

Okay. Alright, so you got your little Batcave.

This is where all the, like, real magic happens actually, right?

So we're in the lab and I wanted to give you a chance to see

what we're actually looking for

-under the ice. -Okay.

But first, let's, uh, work on the atmosphere here.

Mm-hmm.

-Ooh. -Ooh! Okay.

- Check this out. - Wow.

This is a single-cell organism called phytoplankton.

They're just absolutely incredible.

Oh, phyto... phytoplankton, yeah.

Um... I knew everything.

When I was growing up, phytoplankton was all we, we talked about.

We would be on the corner in Philly and somebody would walk up and say,

"Yo, man. Did you hear about phytoplankton?"

And we would stop basketball games

when, when a new phytoplankton,

uh, discovery was made.

It was the, it was the biggest thing when I was growing up.

Alright, so take me all the way back to five years old.

Okay, so that is a phytoplankton.

Yep. So phytoplankton are tiny little plant-like cells.

Trillions and trillions of them live in the ocean.

They're the reason that this planet is habitable

for all the other living organisms that use oxygen.

Wow.

Around 2.4 billion years ago,

our planet's climate was transformed by phytoplankton.

Through photosynthesis, they harness the energy of sunlight.

They consume huge amounts of carbon

and fill the atmosphere with oxygen...

making life possible for all of the animal kingdom.

Phytoplankton are like the lungs of the planet.

So they clean the atmosphere of CO2,

and they create oxygen.

Yeah. So that CO2 doesn't get back into the atmosphere.

It stays trapped there for thousands of years.

So, we gotta get phytoplankton their flowers.

They-they don't get their flowers.

- No, they don't. - It's like the trees,

the trees get all the props for us being able to breathe.

We know how efficient phytoplankton are

at utilizing sunlight for energy.

But in the Arctic, it's dark for half of the year.

So the big question has always been,

what do they do when there is no direct sunlight?

Do they still have the potential to photosynthesize?

This area of research can transform our understanding of climate change.

That's why we need that sample.

This is, uh, officially

the wildest day of my whole life.

Yeah, check this out.

That's a doggone polar bear.

That's my first polar bear right there.

I don't know why I'm whispering 'cause it's a really long way away.

It just seems like you should whisper when you see a polar bear.

For multiple reasons.

Craziness, folks.

This is your captain speaking

from the bridge.

North Pole just ahead of us.

As we got to the North Pole,

you know, the excitement of that was very short-lived.

I, I was very insecure about the dive.

We're gonna stop the ship, and we're gonna get off the ship.

Yeah.

And then we're gonna stand on a piece of floating ice,

and then we're gonna scuba dive under the ice.

Yeah.

It's dangerous because we're going into an environment

where maybe 5 to 10 meters of ice are hanging over your head.

If you run into a problem, you can't just go directly up.

You have to find that hole in the ice to properly resurface.

I generally do well with stress,

but I was very concerned

that this time I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Is that, is that a storm in the distance?

- Are you worried we're gonna-- - No, no, no.

I'm just, I'm trying to keep my eye out, and I just wanna be alert.

Alert, okay, yes.

The idea of coming up and bumping into ice

and knowing you can't get out right there if you had to...

I was really thinking to myself,

"Oh, no. Is this the one where it goes wrong?"

The weather's terrible now.

Terrible, terrible, terrible.

The whole doggone trip coming down to this moment.

Calum, how are you feeling about today?

- Optimistic. - Optimistic. Okay.

The word was "optimistic," but his voice didn't sound good.

Ready to go?

Stand by.

Oh, this is terrible.

This is absolutely terrible.

I ain't no professional diver,

but this don't seem like dive weather.

Hey, so how many people

have you taken out to dive in this kind of weather?

Oh, you are the first one.

Oh, I'm the first.

There's no way this is a good idea.

The weather was not good for the dive.

When we got there, you know, it was like a snowstorm rolled in.

This is ridiculous, man.

I can't even see the damn dive site.

The captain with the weather coming in,

said, "It was a now-or-never kind of situation."

Uh, the boat is supposed to be leaving.

The captain has given us, uh, one shot.

Then we got to go over here.

Jeez. Oh, good heavens.

This was the highest fear point for me in the entire journey.

The thing is, Arctic weather

can change in, like, a snap.

So 20 minutes from now could be bright sun.

- Beautiful. You never know. - Or it could be worse?

-Or it could be worse. -Or it could be worse.

Yeah, it could be worse.

- Oh, it can always be worse. - Yeah.

This is exceptionally cold water,

so I don't want you guys completing this task

any longer than 10 minutes.

If anybody gets any sort of serious leak,

the dive is terminated.

Uh-oh.

Come on, you can do it.

That's better.

Diving in general is a risky endeavor.

Diving under ice is inherently more risky.

And in a very remote place,

you're really stacking the challenges.

Okay, I'm going.

But this research could change our outlook on the planet.

Going in.

How can you not be all in?

Oh, my goodness.

Freezing?

Cold.

I was legitimately scared

but I could tell the weather was coming in.

I could tell we were pushing.

Yep.

I wanted it to be perfect, and I wanted to get the sample.

And I could feel the, the tension.

Good to go?

Hang on, guys, I got a problem.

Okay, I'm gonna sit you back down.

Frozen. See ice in there, see?

Yeah. Hot water's coming in.

My thing froze.

And it was right before I was about to jump in.

That's how cold it is at the North Pole.

I'm seeing bubbles.

And I'm supposed to be down there.

It's getting cold.

At this point, Will's taking more time than anticipated.

But because we're a team,

we're on standby until all of the divers are safely in the water.

You're gonna need more hot water, guys.

Time is ticking. Time is ticking away

before I can actually do what I came to do.

Let's try again.

Come on, Will. Come on, Will.

Three, two, one. Go.

Wow!

Look at that. Jeez.

I could see under the ice sheet...

and it was like an upside-down ice mountain range.

And the sun was coming through and all of that.

It was just stunning.

It was definitely those

once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience.

Allie to WS.

Holy . This is amazing!

It was incredible. It was absolutely incredible.

It was like going through a crystal castle.

All of the ice crystals are reflecting the light

that's shining in on you.

It was literally incredible.

Let's go towards the areas

that look greenish along the bottom of this ice.

Show me the way.

The dive was going well. I see the target samples that I want.

And all we need to do was swim two and a half meters

and slurp a sample.

No. My valve.

No.

Yeah, we've got a problem.

My face mask went into free-flow.

Abort! Abort!

I started hearing, "Abort dive. Abort dive."

And that's not what you wanna hear.

This is it. I have to surface.

Break the ice. Break the ice.

There we go. There we go.

- There we go. - Wow.

Oh, my God.

Well, that was terrible.

No samples.

Literally, it's within my fingertips.

Right? And that's the hardest part about this.

We have no samples.

So it would have taken waiting

at least until the next day to try it again,

and the weather was still relatively poor.

We weren't going to be able to convince the captain

to stay another day.

So it was gut-wrenching when I actually felt the ship move.

It was the realization that the opportunity was gone,

really gone.

So we missed the sample.

Yeah.

Uh, well, that sucks.

Yeah, I guess that's putting it pretty lightly.

And the hardest part about, I think, this is that when you're so close,

-and I mean, we were, like... -I know. My God.

-...you know, you could feel it. -Yeah.

Like, we were there.

It was in our, in our grasp.

For me, to miss out on this is just,

there's just a lot of feelings that I have about it.

Yeah.

To come all the way to the North Pole and miss.

Yeah.

I can see, you know, how heartbreaking this thing is.

Yeah.

It's like...

Yeah, just, it feel, it feels like I slowed you down.

For me, it feels like being in the way, you know.

You know, there are a lot of moving parts.

And, um, when we got out of the water,

and I was thinking about what it is that went wrong

and what part of the process could have been better.

And could I have been better?

But it's not your fault.

You know, it's not any single person's fault

for having not brought their very best to the work.

Sometimes you fail.

There's probably people all over the place

who have failed somehow at doing something.

Just not as big as us.

That might be, that also might be true.

Uh, it's a pretty, it's a pretty significant fail.

Seeing Allie's disappointment in missing the, the sample,

I realized Allie had missed

a part of her life's work,

something that she may never have another opportunity to pursue.

That's where it really started to, uh, feel bad.

The second day, I'm sitting in my room, feeling horrible,

and someone is communicating via the radio that we've been called by the captain.

There's a good weather window and so there's the opportunity

to get back in the water under some ice.

We've moved significantly further south, but it's still in the high Arctic.

I'm definitely used to being the guy

that takes the shot at the, at the buzzer,

but we're on an expedition that has a mission.

And with a more experienced dive buddy,

Allie's got a better chance to bring her discoveries back home.

So I'm gonna step aside.

Step it in in three, two, one.

Allie.

And we're there.

And it's again, incredible.

My dive buddy and I worked quickly to collect material

off the bottom of the ice.

That's the moment where all of the hope turns into reality.

We collected samples. We collected really, really good samples.

Welcome back to the lab. Let's see what we got.

- Let's see what you got. - See what we got.

So I wanted to give you a chance to see some of the things that we found...

-Okay. -...while we were out there.

-You ready? -Yes, I'm very, very ready.

- Okay. - I'm excited.

This is, this is the, uh, the part that I most enjoy.

- You most enjoy. - I'ma enjoy, so--

Is it because it's warm, and not cold and not freezing and snowing in your nose?

-Exactly. -Yeah. Me too.

-Let me show you. -Yeah.

There.

We put part of the sample that we collected in these bottles,

and these bottles are gastight.

And we've been keeping them in an incubator

that has a control setting for temperature and light, right?

So it's cold and it's low light.

And we've been measuring all of the oxygen and CO₂

that they've been using and creating.

And if you look at the top, do you see those little dots?

-Yeah, so that-- -Those are gas bubbles.

Okay, so that was gas bubbles all created

within a sealed environment in the dark.

That's right.

This experiment shows that Arctic phytoplankton are incredible.

They produce oxygen while consuming carbon at imperceptibly low light levels.

So you can imagine, like, when people are designing

and thinking about how do we like, create cooler technology

that might slow down climate change,

they're looking at how you can create power out of things

like CO2 and sunshine.

That's spectacular.

These polar phytoplankton are some of the most light-sensitive cells

we've ever seen.

If we can figure out how to harness their potential,

it could revolutionize the future of green energy.

But not only that, it could also help reverse climate change

because they not only generate power,

they do it by consuming CO2.

But this single entity has all of the power

to create an earth that is habitable for all of us.

You have no idea that all of that is going on

in a drop of seawater.

-It's a whole universe. -A whole universe, yeah.

It's a whole universe of microscopic life.

It blows my mind that just a single drop of water

could open up an astonishing new frontier

for the future of our planet.

I guess my mentor, Dr. Counter, was right.

The answers to everything important...

are at the edges of our world.

And the point of all of our exploring is to return to the place where we started

and know that place for the first time.

Three, two, one.

Traveling Pole to Pole

has not only changed the way I see our planet,

it's changed the way I see myself.

I've been inspired

by the truly extraordinary people I've met,

to ask burning questions about our place on Earth.

Questions about our health...

happiness, history,

even our ultimate survival.

I've been to the edges of our world.

But coming home,

it feels like my journey is just beginning,

because I'm even more curious now than when I first began,

and that is a beautiful thing.