Expedition Antarctica

Antarctica. Unbelievable. 50-day sea expedition attempts to crack its mystery. Uncovering the improbable creatures that somehow thrive at this merciless alien edge of our planet. Day one. The government research vessel Tangaroa embarks from Wellington, New Zealand on a precarious 50-day, six million dollar mission. Destination? Antarctica. A voyage of potential discovery and definite danger. Just getting to the raw sea will tax the ship and crew, navigating the mighty southern ocean and 460 kilometers of crushing sea ice. In this international polar year, Tangaroa will join 17 other ships in a top-to-bottom census of Antarctic marine life. And Andrew Leachman is its captain. The telephone directory of everything that's down there, because it's never really been done. But satellite charts show the worst icing condition in years. Even with Tangaroa's 70 meter long reinforced hull, this could be a mission impossible. Though we can hardly wait to get his hands on the strange scaly creatures from the sea floor, marine biologist Andrew Stewart knows it'll be no dip in the ocean. The ocean is a very difficult environment to study. Down here in the southern ocean, everything is that much harder. You've got to kit up like the Michelin man to get out on deck. Everything takes so much more effort. Whatever happens, the 44 scientists and crew know they'd better play well together, because there's no turning back. They certainly won't lack toys. The team has new gadgets, new cameras, cutting-edge science to help them check the health of the ocean. Has overfishing caused harm? Is global warming forcing a sea change? The scientists aim to find out once they get past the seasickness. Ship's doctor Jenny Visser takes her job very seriously. Tangaroa will sail well beyond the reach of the helicopter rescue. If illness or injury strikes, help will come by slow boat, or not at all. Dr. Jenny's skills could mean the difference between life and death. Right, how we doing? Six days out, the team spots its first iceberg. See that? It's on the radar. That's good, that's good. A free-floating chunk of ice, calved off an ice shelf. This legendary menace of the high seas reveals only one-eighth of itself as it glides aimlessly and destructively through the water. The team find it thrilling, an ominous hint of the hazards that lie ahead. Tangaroa is a fisheries research vessel, no icebreaker. And these small icebergs, called growlers, seem to be ganging up on the ship. Obviously, there's icebergs around, it's bergy water, there's a few growlers about. We're heading south, so I'm not certain exactly where I'm going to go. I want to go and have a look and just have a feel for the terrain, and so which way we can work our way through the ice to the Ross Sea. Captain Leachman navigates these waters knowing others have attempted and failed. You're in the footsteps of Scott Shackleton. It's a challenge. It's a real challenging thing for any ship's captain to take a ship down there. In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became trapped in sea ice. He and his crew spent a grueling winter battling the elements until the ice ultimately crushed and sunk the ship. It's an epic tale of Antarctic survival, and it replayed in 2007 when ice engulfed the tour ship Explorer in Antarctic waters. Read the history and you'll know I am very careful, because I know the rules. The rules are simple. Never underestimate the ice, and never turn your back on it. Satellite ice charts and reports from other ships will help guide him to the thinnest parts of the pack ice. Head scientist Stu Hanchett worries about the encroaching ice barriers scuttling their plans, but he trusts the captain. There was quite a bit of concern whether we would, in fact, be able to get into the Ross Sea and achieve some of our objectives. We envisaged probably taking two, maybe three days to break through the pack ice into the open waters of the Ross Sea itself. The Tongaroa may not be an icebreaker, but the ice doesn't know it. Make short work of it. Off the stern, the minke whales find sanctuary, scarfing down a hearty meal of krill among the ice chunks. Minkes can grow nearly nine meters. Positively puny compared to their blue whale cousins, who can stretch to more than three times that size. And that means an awful lot of krill to sustain a healthy population of whales, penguins, and seals. Especially the crab-eater seals, who also make their home on the shifting ice, slurping down krill, not crabs. Each year, they eat about 25 times their body weight in krill, filtered through their interlocking strainer-like teeth. And these ever-popular emperors of Antarctica will pass the dark and brutal winter by mating. They'll brave temperatures lower than minus 40 to lay eggs and raise their chicks. The work these scientists do down here could help all these animals survive an uncertain future. Each night, three hours of darkness brings new danger to the ice-clogged waters. Safety depends on constant vigilance. And this is only summer ice. In the winter, Tangaroa wouldn't stand a chance. Right, how are we doing? Let's look. The ship breaks free. By now, Tangaroa has spent 10 days at sea, nearly four of them packed in ice. Wind and currents keep this part of the Ross Sea ice-free in summer. Voyage leader John Mitchell can breathe a little easier, but experience tells him he hasn't seen the last of it. It's always going to get in the way, regardless what you do. Even on the best ice years, you still get ice, and it's always where you want to be. While the sea stays calm and free of ice, the team prepares to plunge into an alien world. For the first time, these scientists will get to see what's down there, courtesy of the deep-toed imaging system they call DITAS. Custom-made for this type of deep-sea exploration. Its high-definition video and stills cameras will act as the team's eyes in this high-pressure, low-light environment. OK, we're ready to go. And we're in position, going ready. No one has actually field-tested the unit in such icy conditions before. Too late to think about that now. Like an explorer dispatched to a foreign world, the imaging system begins its fact-finding mission. The scientists hold their breath. Nobody really knows what's down here. At last, the ocean floor. Andrew, could you just hold there for a moment, please? To a marine biologist, this is big. Like the first moonwalk. As the live video images come up from the seabed, the scientists log what they see, and strain to find things they've never seen before. They will trawl for an hour, the length of a videotape, giving the team their first tantalizing image of polar marine life in perpetual nighttime. There's quite a lot of fragments of things here, isn't there? Now that they've seen the creatures on the video, they want to get their hands on them. For that, they'll need to trawl with nets, not cameras. They approach trawling systematically. First, they'll trawl the bottom of the ocean, sweeping across the floor to sample the bottom dwellers. Then they'll trawl at mid-level, collecting samples of free-swimming fish, then skimming the surface for plankton. They'll also use specialized equipment to sample water and mud from directly beneath the ship to study its microbes and chemical makeup. As a commercial fishing practice, bottom trawling dredges up worldwide controversy because of damage to the seabed. Science, however, takes a gentler approach. You know, we have limited our trawls to about 15 or 20 minutes bottom time. The actual percentage of the total seabed area impacted by the bottom trawl is very small. It's chilly, cold. But the bottom trawl doesn't even last 15 minutes before the rough seabed forces the crew to pull the net. That's the cue for American marine biologist Christopher Jones to grab his gear. This will be exciting. The anticipation makes the scientists forget all about the minus 10 degrees Celsius conditions. And Andrew Stewart thinks all of his Christmases have come at once. It's gonna be a bit like Santa Claus coming up the stern ramp there. We don't know what's gonna be in that sack. Could be a pair of socks or it could be a new bike. Who knows? No, this is good. We've got all sorts of things in here. Santa must be pleased with Christopher Jones. There's a big Dasostychus. A big, beautiful Dasostychus mossini. That's what we're looking for. We got a good one here. Dasostychus mossini, the Antarctic toothfish. One of the giants of the marine ecosystem. On the menu, it goes by Chilean sea bass and it's harvested by the thousands. If it disappears from the ocean, more than dinner's at stake. A nice diverse catch here. It could mean an ecosystem on the brink of collapse. This is the fish that is probably the most economically important species that's being caught by the commercial fishery in the Southern Ocean. This is a fine specimen here of an Antarctic toothfish. This big guy tells the crew that all's well down below. The undersea camera built up the team's expectations about what they might collect. The bottom trawl net delivers on its promise. Sponges, among the most primitive sea animals, have no nervous or digestive systems. They feed by filtering water through their pores. The trawl brought up an exotic specimen that weaves its body out of silica. That's a hexactinellid sponge, which is also known as a glass sponge. And a very slow-growing, very irritating if you get any of the spicules on you. And Santa's sack has delivered a special gift for Andrew. Snailfish. Fantastic. Snailfish are poorly understood, and Andrew may have found a new species. Some of these beauties down to the lab. This is why I came to like this. It's beyond words. We now have whole families of fishes that are found nowhere else in the world, except in the Southern Ocean. And these are fascinating animals. These are the ice fishes. Temperatures above five degrees Celsius are too hot for them and, in fact, are lethal for them. The sea holds a dizzying variety of fish to baffle and thrill marine biologists. Nature even saw fit to make about 115 species of Andrew's snailfish. You have to look at such features as the shape of the teeth, the jaws, the shape of the gill rakers, as well as counts of the vertebrae, counts of the dorsal and anal fin rays. And then along comes the kind of discovery that blows biologists out of the water. Now, I have no idea which species this is at the moment. That color pattern on the fins is like nothing I've ever seen before. Most scientists hope to find something truly new, but only a few actually accomplish it. Andrew might have discovered yet another new species, making him the first human to lay eyes on this creature that's evolved over millions of years. Though cut short, this first trawl offers something for everyone. Well, I'm very happy with the first trawl. Yeah, we only had 10 minutes on the bottom and it was still quite rough ground, so we had to haul early, but yeah, it looks very good for the first one. Scientists have cataloged about 135 species of fish from the largely unexplored Ross Sea. On this expedition, the team intends to add a new chapter to this Antarctic fish story. In the depths of the ship, the team studies the fish finder to locate schools of small fish and krill, the foundation of the elaborate food chain. Since big fish depend on little fish, the scientists want to check their health. That means another fishing expedition. Yeah, hi, Andrew. It's Richard here down in the acoustics lab. We're seeing a bit of a mark on our standard down here. We're quite interested in doing a mid-water trawl. The target's spotted. The net's deployed. But as the net closes in on the fish, the weather closes in on the ship. Unlike the previous trawl, this monster mid-water net will trawl between surface and the sea bottom, scooping up the free-swimming fish. This is the bit that's going into the trawl, and all these little red tick marks through here, that tells us we're catching fish. So everything's looking good, isn't it, Andrew? It is indeed. Menacing clouds gather on the horizon. A sudden turn in the polar weather can endanger equipment and anyone caught on deck. Okay, we'll haul it down. All right, Ronnie, calming up as she comes. The wind from the approaching front hits suddenly. Before they can get the net on board, a full gale sends its fury. All in now, all in now. With the stern ramp open, the angry sea floods the deck. Waves crashing over the stern can easily sweep a crew member into the icy, treading sea, where the cold shot can kill three minutes. It overflows with silverfish, a very healthy sign. It's one of the most abundant species in the Ross Sea. It's eaten by quite a lot of species, so it's important in the food chain. Among the massive silverfish, Andrew spies a lethal predator most likely feeding when snared. What's the name of that again, Andrew? Dagger tooth. A dagger tooth. I wonder what it was called there. Stick your finger in his mouth. This striking find wields a mean set of chompers. It's a pretty fish. It comes up underneath like that, bites down, chomp, reverses. And it severs the spinal cord. It's paralyzing that fish to drown. The ferocious storm puts a halt to the science program. The ship slows down to ride it out. Nature runs the showdown, and the team battens down the hatches. This isn't fun, you know. Despite the boats pitching and rolling, life goes on. A well-stocked galley serves those who could still manage to keep the food down. Whatever the sea throws at them, the team takes in stride. Though striding in heavy swell does take some practice. At last, the storm passes, costing the crew a day and a half's sampling. Microbiologist Julie Hall's work involves checking the health of the Southern Ocean's tiniest residents. This device collects her water samples. She can remotely open and close the sampling bottles at various depths, from the seabed to the surface. Once the samples break the surface, the team rushes to retrieve them without spilling a drop. As you can see, it's a difficult and dense operation, and the get crew have to be really careful bringing it on board in such rough and slippery conditions. So we're going to pull around into the garage so we're out of the wind with the sampling, and then we'll start taking the samples off the bottles. She wants to see if increased greenhouse gases in the ocean have any effect on life down here. She'll measure chemicals, water temperature, and bacteria in the sea. We've got the water from that coming out and going in about 10 different directions for analysis of nutrients in the water, chlorophyll, phytoplankton. We're also looking at viruses, the microzooplankton, those very, very tiny zooplankton. Her work in this far-off sea may have global implications, but Julie's about to feel the full weight of her isolation from the world back home. Just two weeks into the mission, Captain Leachman receives an urgent satellite phone call from the New Zealand police. Early morning, I was called to the bridge, and the sergeant in Matamata said, look, we've got some bad news here. Have you got a Dr. Julie Hall aboard? And I said, yes, and he said, well, unfortunately, her husband's been killed in a blinding accident. Anyway, what I did do is got Julie up and sat her down. It was my duty to inform her, and it's a very, very difficult thing to do, so I'm awfully sorry. I've got some bad news, and your husband's been killed. Julie's husband, Dr. Trevor Adkins, was also a scientist. He died while competing in a gliding competition. He was competing in the New Zealand championship, and he'd had an accident very close to the airfield and had been killed instantly on impact at the site. I explained that I would do everything in my power to get her home, but the difficulty, of course, being isolated where we were, there's no guarantee we could get her off. Fickle weather and enormous distances have conspired against Julie. By now, Tangaroa has sailed well beyond reach of any helicopter and too far out to turn around. If Julie has any hope of getting home, Captain Leachman must find a nearby ship able to make the journey. I had to think about my own situation, how I felt about things, how any decision impacted on others back in New Zealand, but also the impact me leaving would have on the science and the people around me. With the weather deteriorating and the nearest ship at least three days away, Julie has to make an immediate decision. Stay with the mission or return home to her family. And as it turned out, I'd made the decision not to leave. She decided that really she was going home to an empty house and she didn't want to go home. She was happy where she was. The strongest reaction of why aren't you coming home came from people who really didn't understand the isolation and also not really the situation on the ship in terms of being surrounded by close colleagues who were very supportive. As they edge their way along the Ross Ice Shelf, the wind kicks up an icy spray. Just another summer day in the Antarctic. The temperature plunges to minus 14 Celsius and spray freezes on contact. The next deep towed imaging deployment gets put on hold, much to the crew's relief. Such is the life of a sailor. Everything's frozen, including us. And the forecast gets even more chilling. Okay, it's satellite image that just came in this morning to show us the current state of play. The southern Ross Sea is refreezing faster than expected, already covering several of their planned sampling stations. It could be arduous. If the southerly wind continues, the whole thing is going to freeze up and it'll be like operating in fresh, wet concrete. So it's not good. We won't really do much sampling if those conditions prevail. With the water temperature down to minus 1.8 Celsius, the sea starts to freeze in a spectacular, if alarming display. It stretches to the horizon in every direction and can potentially strand the ship. Don't like it when it's really thick. I really don't. I'm always fat, I'll do a Shackleton. The pancake ice has begun. Heralding one of the planet's greatest annual displays, the freezing of seas around Antarctica. Over winter, the event effectively doubles the size of the continent. The science leaders call an emergency strategy meeting. I think the general consensus is now that we don't go much further east than here, which is probably a good idea because looking out the window. They agree to continue their work here as long as they can before the ocean freezes solid. Because of the southernmost extremity of our activities, we're going to do Adidas toe and then we will proceed northwest. It's like fishing in a margarita. The slushy turmoil on the surface hides the calm waters below. As Antarctica began its deep freeze over 30 million years ago, life here evolved and flourished. Now comes a new challenge. Despite the pristine nature of this remote ocean, the imaging system shows human intruders. The stills camera snaps a beer bottle. And commercial fishing activity leaves its mark in the form of a trawler's long line. When the weather allows, commercial trawlers drop their deadly long lines here to catch toothfish, the so-called sea bass. This healthy specimen means more than tonight's dinner special. It's the poster child for good fishing management. Elsewhere in the southern seas, indiscriminate practices have dangerously depleted its relative, the Patagonian toothfish. But stricter Antarctic regulations allow us to have our fish and eat it too. Christopher Jones hopes it stays that way. It's the one fish that human beings are having the greatest impact on. We're okay now, but we have to be very, very cautious if we decide to increase the catch. This whopper weighs an incredible 56.8 kilograms and still only half the size these mighty fish can grow. In one recent summer, the long liners relieved the raw sea of 3,000 tons of them. While Tangaroa has only caught five for research. There may still be plenty of fish in the sea, but these scientists are always chasing the one that got away. Besides catching a mammoth toothfish, the team has also collected some of its favorite food, including the glacial squid. That's a lovely specimen of the glacial squid. Very nice condition indeed for a very delicate squid. Squid and octopus, fragile members of the rich and diverse cephalopod family, live in every climate and at every depth. They may look bizarre, but they boast the biggest brains among the invertebrates. Like any spineless creature, a squid's first instinct is to hide. But a cornered one has some potent weapons in its armory. Like this parrot-like beak that can deliver a nasty peck. Or these lethal hooks used for snaring prey. But right now, Darren Stevens has snared his catch of the day. An incredibly rare deep water octopus. This is a lovely specimen of Staurotuthis. It's another one of the Dumbo octopus and a very gelatinous individual. Only a handful of these octopuses have ever been found anywhere. And this is the first intact one caught in the Ross Sea. The fact that it came out of the net 100% intact makes it even more remarkable. So far, Darren has collected 26 species of squid and octopus. But he yearns for the big one. This baby colossal squid, found only in Antarctic waters, can grow up to an amazing four meters long. Darren hopes to meet its mother. Overnight, the imaging system shows the seabed too rocky for the bottom trawl net. The situation calls for the smaller, more robust beam trawl. Instead of the steel doors, a large wooden beam props open the mouth of the net. As the net pulls in, the team eagerly awaits its catch. From 1,600 meters down, it feels like they've hooked the big one. Perhaps it's Darren's colossal squid. Well, yeah, I heard something go whoomp right there. Not a squid, but colossal all the same. Well, it looks like we might have done a little bit more geologic sampling. The deckhands get left with the heavy lifting. Studying the latest satellite charts, Captain Leachman finds a pathway through the ice barrier. If they leave right away. At some stage, we'll need to escape from this area, through this ice bridge, and away to the north. The way to deal with encroaching ice is to head for warmer waters. And in the southern hemisphere, that only means one thing. Go north, young man, go north. As Tangaroa steams north into deeper water, Julie deploys the multiple opening and closing net, or mock nets. Each tentacle of this mock nest monster has snatched plankton and krill from various depths. This is a very important mock nest sample for us. It's come from 3,400 meters. It's the deepest one we've ever done. Along with the microscopic animals known as zoo plankton, Lisa spies a tiny deep sea squid. A little gift for Darren, the squid guy. Is Darren up there? Darren? Darren, yeah. He says he is. Tell him we've got a present for him in the plankton lab. Isn't he beautiful? He's in very good condition. You know, we've found some fascinating things, and quite often they're bright red, which is really cool. He's great and very much still alive. What have you got for me? Oh, that is gorgeous. Bathytoosis abyssicola. You've done very, very well. As Tangaroa nudges north into the sea ice, the work in the plankton lab goes on. In the mock nest net, we collect some of the larger phytoplankton in there, and sometimes it's come up literally looking like pea soup with those larger phytoplankton that get caught in the net. I'm amazed at the amount of life in here. It certainly looks quite productive, a lot more productive than I'd imagined for Antarctic waters. But I guess something's got to be there to feed the krill, which live down here. The mid-trawl net hauled up plenty of krill, and Chris gets the smelly job of weighing and measuring every last one of them. It's the only way to calculate how many of these crucial crustaceans inhabit the Ross Sea. Krill really drive most of the ecosystem. That is all the land-based predators, penguins, the seals, the birds, most of the fish species, whales. They're all highly dependent on krill. The arrival of two humpbacks delights the team. They've come for the krill, of course, gorging themselves before migrating back to the breeding grounds in the Pacific. This is great. It couldn't be any better. The sun is shining, and it's just a beautiful day. The ice is right behind those whales. Emperor penguins also come for the all-you-can-eat buffet. After laying their eggs in a dead of winter, the females complete an arduous trek from open water to feed the chicks. And krill, one of the lowest links in the food chain, becomes a meal fit for an emperor. 33 days into the expedition, Tongaroa breaks into open water again. On the horizon looms Scott Island and Haggit's Pillar. These insignificant-looking rocks are actually the top of a sea mount, a volcanic undersea mountain thrust from the bottom of the ocean 4,000 meters below. A deep region known as the abyssal seabed. Malcolm Clark studies these bedrock communities that thrive on dramatically steep slopes. Some creatures prefer a bed with more support. They opt to live on the rocky seamount instead of the posh seabed. So animals that need to attach to something really hard like corals, sponges, they're able to latch on and again survive where the soft sediment of the abyssal plains doesn't enable them to survive. The team decides to drop in on the seamount community using the beam trawl. But the seamount is not accepting visitors. Up comes nothing but the tangled cables of the broken trawl. The wooden beam is smashed in two. From the data, it looked pretty good. They need to repair it or they're dead in the water. The crew is optimistic. It's not going to take long. I mean, if you give us an hour or so, we're done for. They cut out the tape and splice it back together. And where would a sailor be without his knots? Practicing the crocheting. Before long, they're back in business. Having braved ice storms, broken equipment, and rough seas for almost two months, the team braces itself for the most high-pressure assignment of all. They will delve 3,500 meters into the abyssal plain, a depth almost as high as the Swiss Alps. To prepare for the mission, team members perform an exacting scientific endeavor, decorating polystyrene cups. Because they've been made and compressed with air, when we put them down to the deep, they'll hopefully compress and get smaller and smaller and smaller. And eventually, we hope they'll turn out basically like symbols. It will endure 300 times more pressure than we experience every day. Suddenly, the abyssal plain reveals itself. It looks barren, like the surface of Mars. But a closer look reveals life. No one has ever witnessed sites like these in Antarctica before. Then, something goes horribly wrong. We've just lost the video. Yeah, we just noticed that. We're wondering what's going on. It could be a minor malfunction or a catastrophic failure. It just concerns me when you get to that deep and it suddenly goes, you sort of think, oh my God, it's a broken seal or something. They haul the apparatus back up and see the problem right away. Oh dear, it's like dripping water. That's not supposed to happen. Yeah, what's happened is the pressure has been too great for the glass in the bottom and it's got a hairline crack across it. Remarkably, the camera continued to operate, allowing Chas Marriott to replay its destruction. You can see a crack started to form across the glass lens on the front of the housing. And as we scroll through the frames, you can see water starting to seep into the housing. It's these blurry bits here and slowly filling up the bottom of the housing. And the lens of water evens out across the glass. You can still see all the photos quite clearly again. For the rest of the team, the experiment is a crushing success. 300 atmospheres of pressure, bearing down equally on all sides, have miniaturized them without damage. Oh, they're great. Even the illustrations and lettering remain in perfect miniature. The team also take the opportunity to trawl the bottom. Having fed out more than 5,000 meters of the repaired cable into the seat, the beam trawl finally comes aboard at 2 a.m. And after six hours of waiting, the team gets its reward. 12 buckets of mud and one single fish. But in this mud lies many delectable delights, like this sea cucumber. It's hard to see where it's from, so that would be, I guess, another oral appendage. He's wagging his tail, though. Now, if this doesn't demonstrate all the glamour of marine biology, Corinne has cleaned up her sea cucumber for a better look. This is the backside of it, and the front of it is clearly the other side, which has got these oral tentacles. Then Corinne finds an even more curious specimen. It has something quite interesting at the front, which sort of likened it a little bit to a hippopotamus. We don't know how many are down there. We don't know how common this is. I have never seen anything like this before. Sea cucumbers are the ocean's vacuum cleaners, walking along the bottom, sucking nutrients out of the mud they eat. The video enables the scientists to observe them in all their sluggish action. Scientists recognize about 1,200 species of sea cucumbers, none of them very attractive, except maybe to a marine biologist. But as the expedition winds down, they'll encounter creatures strange by any standard. 44 days into the voyage, and the last day of sampling has arrived. It's also Andrew's 50th birthday. The team has stayed up late to prepare a surprise. They've conducted 312 sampling deployments at 39 different stations, yet still a sense of expectation grips them. Last bottom trawl of the cruise. The video shows parasites attached to deep sea rat tail fish. The scientists hope the trawl snares one. After a long day's wait, Andrew and the others get to see the last net come in. With deep trawls, they've come to expect some strange specimens. They are not disappointed. These abyssal fish have evolved to cope with the crushing pressure down below. But when they're pulled to the surface, their guts blow up like a balloon. As they've come up, the pressure's caused their swim bladders to expand and blow out their mouths. Unfortunately, it doesn't do them much good. And the fish with its horrifying host has turned up in the net. Parasites right here. On the rat tail. You can see that thing. It's got a tube. Part of it goes in well down into the body cavity. Today, Andrew receives a birthday gift only a biologist could love. An ambush predator with a mouth of needle-sharp teeth. And the scientific name for this one is Kali, named after the Hindu goddess of destruction. These fish have a remarkable ability to swallow prey much, much larger than themselves. And the whole stomach area just unzips and expands. This is just a great find. It's the first find for this expedition. First record of this family in the Ross Sea. As the mission winds down, the scientists log the last of the specimens. This snapshot of Antarctic biodiversity will be compared with the results of expeditions to come. As they head back to New Zealand, Captain Leachman reflects on Tangaroa's 7,000 nautical mile journey through one of the most challenging oceans on Earth. Once you've had a touch of it and seen the visibility, see 200 miles, see Mount Melbourne pink in the midnight sun. Oh, I mean, there's no... Words can't describe just the beauty of it. It's wonderful. And would he go again? For Julie Hall, the life she's coming back to is not the one she left. But she has no doubt that the painful choice she made was the right one. I felt that he would have wanted me to stay and finish the program that I've put so much time and energy into developing. I've been planning this for over two years, so to walk away would have been very difficult. Andrew Stewart and the fish team scored 88 different fish species. At least five are thought to be new to science, but only a small fraction of what scientists believe is still out there. I think that what we have already retrieved from the Southern Ocean has been incredible. I think in many ways we've barely scratched the surface. As these scientists return home, they're proud that their 50 days aboard Tongaroa have made this unfathomable world a little more knowable.