Arctic explorer and adventurer Mark Wood joins WIRED to answer the internet's ice cold questions about polar expeditions. How does an average person travel to the arctic? Can they? What does it take to prepare for an arctic expedition? Where precisely is the North Pole? What kind of animals live there? What do you do if you’re face to face with a polar bear? Answers to these questions and plenty more await on Polar Expedition Support.
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Chaimuki
Editor: Alex Mechanik
Expert: Mark Wood
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Jasmine Breinburg; Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Irys Steel
Gaffer: Jake Newell
Sound Mixer: Michael Panayiotis
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Chaimuki
Editor: Alex Mechanik
Expert: Mark Wood
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Jasmine Breinburg; Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Irys Steel
Gaffer: Jake Newell
Sound Mixer: Michael Panayiotis
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00I'm Mark Wood. I've been doing polar expeditions for over 20 years.
00:04I'm here today to answer your questions. This is Polar Exploration Support.
00:13So Adrian Jones, 28, asked what was the most repulsive thing you had to eat on your expeditions.
00:20It was a rancid whale blubber, which was absolutely repulsive and just was really
00:27tough to chew through as well. And the people who gave it me, who knew me really well,
00:31were smiling because they knew it tasted bad. When you chew it, it's like chewing on a car tire,
00:36but it also stinks. So Troy P Simpson asks, I've no idea why I'm watching videos
00:43about what to do if I come face to face with a polar bear. Well, I've come face to face with
00:48a polar bear, Troy, and 300 meters away, right up close to my face, actually followed me for about
00:56three days. But the moment that I started to feel my heart really beat was when I actually
01:02could smell the bear. And that means the bear's really, really close. And I could hear him sort
01:07of grunting. So this is the nose of the polar bear. I was stood on some ice, luckily, and he
01:14jumped up and sniffed my GoPro camera. To give it perspective, he was an arm's distance away.
01:21So he was this close away from me, which is too close in my world. And this is kind of what I was
01:27looking at. The incredible strength within this jaw to rip an animal open was only at an arm's
01:34length away. It's the first time that I've actually felt real danger. And you only feel tremendously
01:41alone when you feel you need somebody's help. And I had nobody else there. It seemed like hours,
01:48but it was seconds of looking at this bear. And eventually he dropped down and just walked away.
01:54And at that point, I got this pen with the firework on the end and I pointed it at his feet
01:59and luckily it exploded in front of him, not harming the bear, but enough to scare him away.
02:05And he ran off. But for about two or three nights, I was still sticking my head out the tent like a
02:10meerkat and looking around and making sure that he'd gone and he'd definitely gone, which was a
02:16massive relief. So Sirius GF says, bro, where is the North Pole? Actually, there's five North Poles.
02:26Let me show you. So this is the top of the world and you've got Russia and you've got Canada and
02:31all the countries around. But the blue bit in the center is the Arctic Ocean. To show you where the
02:36five North Poles are, I'm going to use my trusty polar bear claw. You've got the geographic North
02:42Pole, which is the very top of the planet where all of the lines of longitude pass through. That's
02:47a fixed pole. Then you've got the pole of inaccessibility, which is on the Arctic Ocean
02:53itself. Again, a fixed point, but it's equidistant from any landmass around it, from Greenland to
02:59Canada to Russia, etc. Then you've got three other poles. One of them is the geomagnetic North Pole,
03:05which all just geophysicists like. Very difficult word to say. And that's a moving pole. And currently
03:12it's going across the Canadian island of Ellesmere. Then you've got the magnetic North Pole, which I'm
03:17sure you've heard of. And that's going across the Canadian Ocean side and it's crossing over to
03:22Russia. So it's moving and moving over to the Russian side. And that's really in the news at the moment
03:27because of its shift. And the final pole that you've got is actually in the air itself. It's the point
03:33from Polaris to the North Pole and it's the celestial pole. So that's five North Poles. So a great
03:40question or statement from Stakes L1, the dudes that were involved in the heroic age of Arctic
03:48exploration were out of their freaking minds. So the pioneer age of polar exploration were really
03:54from the late 1800s onwards, right up to the point we reached the geographic North and geographic
04:00South Poles, which were earlier on in the last century. At that time, it was about discovery
04:06and mapping these areas. In the days of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men doing epic journeys
04:11across Antarctica, some would say that they risked their lives for discovery, but really it was pure
04:18survival. So they weren't given a choice. They went out there to do something that no other humans
04:24had done before, which was so heroic. Nowadays, that wouldn't really happen because the communications
04:30we have, the global communications, the satellite, etc, would allow us to show the peril in real time
04:36so we could be rescued. R. McCausberg has written, read today that the Arctic explorers brought
04:43lard with them. Since it's so calorifically dense, did they just eat it or what? That's what the
04:50explorers used to do. Nowadays, we're a little bit more advanced in understanding nutrition. And this
04:55picture shows little packets of food that I've decanted from the original packet. There's actually
05:00about 100 packets of food, and you've got main meals and also puddings. And that allows me also
05:05to put salami and butter and cheese and salt and everything else in there. And you wrap it up into
05:11a little ball. Instead of having a big carrier bag full of food each day, there's actually two
05:17handfuls of food that you have. And inside there is apple and custard powder. And that's what I eat
05:23as a pudding. You've also got the main meals on this side, which can be a mixture of curries, stews,
05:30pastas as well for different packets. So you're not eating the same food all the time. I go and
05:35collect the snow or the ice, and I melt it down, then boil it up. And then I pour this powder into
05:41a container and pour the boiling hot water into the container, mix it up, and then it expands.
05:47And that's what I eat. Full of protein, full of carbs, full of everything you need to perform
05:51really well. Anderson Lemke asks a good question. What kind of cell phones do Arctic Explorers use?
05:58With cell phones, we can't use them in these extreme cold areas. We use satellite phones,
06:03and you can't use them as well like normal cell phones to look at the internet and to
06:08connect with friends or, say, call emergency services. We use these to connect directly with
06:14the rescue services that we've already connected with prior to the expedition. I can also connect
06:20with friends and family, but I don't when I'm on extreme expeditions. And the reason being is
06:25it's too emotional for me. To bring myself back into their world will drain my sort of build-up
06:33of non-emotion that I've got for the expedition. It loses my focus for what I'm doing each day,
06:39which is pretty tough mentally. So I don't need somebody that I love on the other end of the phone
06:44weakening that spirit, if you like. So this is a question from Al Lowe. What's the difference
06:49between the North Pole and the South Pole? All of the difference in the world, he says. So from an
06:54explorer's perspective, the Arctic Ocean or the North Pole is the toughest expedition you can do,
07:02hands down. Antarctica itself, being a continent, all you have to deal with is oncoming winds,
07:07tremendous cold, the loneliness of being out there, and sometimes crevasses, but you generally
07:12know where the crevasses are. In the North, it's like a zoo up there. There's a varied amount of
07:18animals there. If you move to Antarctica, in the center around the South Pole, there's no birds or
07:23anything like that. It's just silence. So Sarah Bushway asks, watching season seven of Alone,
07:31they have to survive 100 days in the Arctic by themselves to win a million dollars. Could you do
07:37it? I'd love to win a million dollars with what I do. For me personally, I work alone a lot. So I'm
07:46known for solo work, working in Antarctica, the Arctic Circle, also on training expeditions as
07:52well. So I've spent 50 days in Antarctica alone, 30 days around the North Pole, another 30 days
07:58in the Norwegian high Arctic. Generally, I'm okay being alone. And the biggest issue there is the
08:04mental status and strength that you require to do that. And I think experience gives you the
08:09abilities to carry that out. And as you're going through a blank landscape, it gives you tremendous
08:15creativity in your mind to think about yourself as a human being, but what direction you want to
08:20go in, in life as well. So Be The Spark has asked a serious question. Other than reindeer and the
08:27occasional polar bear, what kind of animals would live in Santa's North Pole? You've got Arctic fox,
08:34Arctic hares, which are small animals, obviously. You've also got caribou, which is a reindeer,
08:39and you've got musk ox, which are quite big animals, pack animals. And also you've got
08:43lemmings, very, very small. And the only real bird I can think of would be the Arctic tarn, which is
08:49in fact the longest migrating bird on the planet and can also be found in Antarctica as well. So
08:55it goes all the way around the planet. It's very rare, but sometimes you do get interaction with
09:00these animals. So Andy C1 asks, which polar explorer do you have the most admiration for and why?
09:07So two big explorers, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott, did epic expeditions in
09:14Antarctica. But there was one person who has actually worked with them, is like shadow of
09:19these two men, and it's an Irishman called Tom Crean. And he was the workforce behind them and
09:25is known as the unsung hero of that age. So it was in Tom Crean's nature to survive, but also
09:33to look after the people he was with. So he put his life in danger by actually rescuing his men,
09:42looking after Shackleton, being the forefront or the energy behind making that expedition
09:49to the South Pole a success, as in all the men survived. Rudy Schuller asks, what do negative
09:56degree temperatures feel like? To stand alone in minus 40, minus 50 is a real
10:04tenseness on your body, almost claustrophobic that you can't get out of the situation. It's a real
10:10horrible feeling that you're engulfed in the cold. But to survive in that moment, you need to do
10:17three things. One is you need to make sure your body core temperature is warm. So by eating food
10:24is a real survival technique to warm yourself up from the inside. The second thing is to wear the
10:30correct clothing. And that's something that will help you keep warm, but also allow your body to
10:34breathe as you're moving. So you don't create sweat on your body, because if you create sweat,
10:39then when you stop, that will turn to ice, will cling onto your heart and your lungs and can give
10:44you hypothermia. And then the third thing is movement. So as long as you can move, keep moving,
10:49keep the blood flowing around the body away from the extremities so you don't get frostbite,
10:54then your body can function and you can progress. So inside the tent itself at night,
11:00it's the same temperature as outside the tent. You've got a little protection from the wind,
11:04which is good, but it can be minus 35 with inside the tent, which is colder than your
11:10freezers at home. But any explorer, any adventurer that you ever meet, and you say the sound of the
11:15cooker is, as soon as you start hearing that sound, your brain starts getting happy because
11:23your body starts warming up. And it's amazing to feel that initial heat coming off the cooker,
11:28where you start stripping your clothes down and you can actually be in base layers inside your
11:33tent as a tent heats up. So Maiden Slate asks, curious, how would you envision medical care in
11:40remote and rural areas? And I am self-sufficient. So I need to, first of all, be trained in medical
11:46care myself. In Antarctica, as I started to move towards the South Pole over 50 days, I had a
11:52problem with my boot. It wasn't fitting very well with my skis. So I had a little bit of movement
11:58inside with my foot. And over a few days, it started to heat up. And one day I took my foot
12:03out and I found that the base of my foot, the skin had come off, a massive amount of skin had come
12:08off and you just had the rawness of the skin underneath. And I was in a lot of agony. So what
12:13I did at night was I cut the skin off and because skin's got protein in it, I ate the skin. I didn't
12:19eat the skin. That's a joke, by the way. I took the skin off. After a few days, it actually dried off
12:26because Antarctica is a dry desert. If you expose the foot to the dryness, it dries really, really
12:32quickly. So the environment actually saved the day for me. So this is from original LHRN. I think
12:39I need a career change. I wondered how one becomes an Arctic explorer. I think you just need to find
12:45where your passion lies and what you want to do and just take steps from there. The word explorer
12:51is quite a contentious word in this modern era. I've been asked whether I can actually call myself
12:55that. Well, after 35 plus expeditions in the polar regions, I feel I have a right to say that
13:03and also it excites children when I come into schools to give talks so they know that I've got
13:08an explorer coming in. Really, the explorers that I recognise are these guys in the past, the pioneers
13:15who discovered areas on the planet and in space. They are the pioneer explorers of the past. The
13:20key point is you've got to have the desire to go out there because the environment is so
13:26claustrophobic and unpredictable that you've got to have the real need to go out there
13:31and operate. So you've got to consider that to begin with. So my suggestion would be to go out
13:36and experience the environment to begin with and then to decide how you want to operate out there.
13:42Lime L.A. Cowboy. I love polar exploration because where else are you going to find this many people
13:49excited to discover a guy who got cannibalised 180 years ago? That's a good statement and yeah,
13:58people are excited about the macabre, aren't they? A hundred or so years ago, in the days of Sir John
14:04Franklin and his men who perished along the Northwest Passage in high arctic Canada,
14:08weren't discovered until recent times as ships were. But all of the men died on ice. There was
14:14talks of cannibalism as well and this is the human nature at its rawest and really the only
14:20reason we know about this is because of the diaries left behind and the historic value of
14:26the whole expedition itself. And that just shows how harsh these guys were living. If you have to
14:32resort to something like that, it's just hell on earth. So Arianas has asked how to travel to the
14:37Arctic. You can pull sledges like I do, carry everything with you. You can go on snowmobiles
14:43with teams. You can also go on dog teams, which I love doing in Alaska. I've worked with really
14:48good dog teams out there called Squid Dog Acres. So these little blue bits of material are actually
14:54booties for dogs to put on their feet. So these dogs have actually run in these. This was one of
14:59the main transports back in the day for dog teams to transport humans across the ice. And it's still
15:06used today in high arctic areas, but not in Antarctica. They're not allowed dogs in Antarctica
15:11anymore because it's unnatural for dogs to be there. But it is a main source of transport for
15:16the polar regions. So aside from pulling sledges, we also wear skis and we go backcountry skiing. So
15:23we have the bindings which are not attached to the ski itself with the whole foot. It's just
15:27attached by the toe. It allows you to pivot and push the ski along. So we do this as we're pulling
15:32the sledges along. It allows us to propel ourselves a greater distance using less energy. So I do
15:38extreme expeditions, but the polar regions are accessible to anybody to go and venture into.
15:45You just need to travel with the right company. Devin Flaherty has asked me about the third man
15:50factor. Has anybody ever experienced the third man factor? When I did the South Pole, I crossed there
15:56for 50 days without any music, anything to stimulate my brain. But after a while, as I started to
16:02approach the South Pole itself, it's on a plateau of 3,000 meters. And I started to push up this
16:08plateau. And I was in quite a bit of pain. My body was folding a little bit. I was really pushing
16:14against the wind as I was going forward. So it was a horrendous time for me. And at that point, I felt
16:20an arm around my shoulder. I was alone. I felt somebody gripping onto my shoulder and somebody
16:26leaning into me, whispering words of encouragement, keep going, keep going, keep going. And that allowed
16:31me to almost be quite zen. And even though I felt really relaxed as I was pushing forward, my mind
16:37was clearer. My body was still probably struggling, but I didn't feel it inside. And it felt great.
16:42And that happened about six or seven times on that expedition. And when I called for it, it never
16:48happened. When I got back to Canada, I spoke to a great explorer up there and said, this is what
16:54happened. Because I was a little bit embarrassed as well. And he said that it had happened to him
16:58on the way back from the North Pole, when they tried to find this food area, which they'd laid
17:02out on ice. They'd lost it. So they did a pattern search and something was telling him to go over
17:07towards the left. And as he walked a hundred yards, he found the food in the ice. I'm sure scientists
17:13would say that you're a lower step and your mind was thinking that you had no other choice and I
17:18needed support. So it manifested this support that I required. My mum died 10 years prior to that.
17:25So I could easily relate it to maybe it's the spirit of my mother coming through. And a lot
17:31of people might do that. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't smile at that or joke about it. It's one of the
17:36two. I'd like to think it's my mum, but who knows. So See The Universe has asked, if you could bring
17:41one animal back from the North Pole to be a pet, what would you choose and why? And the bad news
17:48they're giving me is penguins don't live in the North. Thanks for that. I didn't really know that.
17:51If you're asking me what's my favourite animal and maybe a cuddly toy version of it, then I would
17:58definitely bring back a lemming because it's very small. It's very cute. And it's very easy to hide
18:05away in my house, away from people who think a 58 year old man shouldn't have a teddy bear.
18:10So Licensed Clown asked, what if I went to work in the Arctic? I feel like that would be cool.
18:16It would be. How many people can say they did that? I can talk about the Canadian high Arctic,
18:21which is probably half the size of Europe with a human population of about 500 people. There's
18:27two settlements, Greasefjord and Resolute Bay, which have about 270 to 300 people in. And then
18:33there's a few research centres around a vast area, which makes the numbers up to between
18:39four and 500 people. However, there's also polar bears roaming around that area. So the polar bear
18:45population really outweighs the human population. So Cora asked, how does one prepare for an
18:51exploration to the Arctic? And I think that to answer this, it's in preparation. There's many
18:57things you have to pack for a polar expedition, but the top five things that I would recommend
19:01are these. Sleeping bag is essential for a good night's sleep. Sleep is so important to how you
19:07perform the next day. A great tent. You need something which will withstand storms and keep
19:13you protected from the wind. A great cooker. Something which will be reliable through the 50,
19:19100 days. And then the fourth thing is your navigation. And the final thing is if I was
19:24going to drop all four of those and just pick one thing, it would be a location beacon. And if we
19:29don't take that with us, I think it's foolhardy. So to take a navigational system with you to track
19:35where you're going and then to press it in your hour of need is so important because the success
19:40of an expedition is coming home safe and sound. I don't really take books or anything like that
19:45because they're too heavy. I take a little iPod with me with music on it and some podcasts on
19:52there as well. But also I take a dictaphone because I'm not great at writing things down
19:57as the pioneers used to do, write great diaries. So I actually sew it into my sleeping bag
20:03and at night when I've had something to eat and I'm nice and warm, tucked in my sleeping bag
20:08and it's the winds blowing outside and it's tremendously cold, I can sit in my sleeping bag
20:13and talk about the day and talk about how I feel, which I think is really important for people to
20:18listen to. What are your biggest fears? The cold, the natural predators or the isolation? What draws
20:25humans to visit the Arctic and how can one visit the great north and leave it untouched? For me,
20:32the biggest fear on exploration isn't polar bears, isn't the cold, it's the fear of giving in. It's
20:39the fear of that moment where you find a weakness within your body and your heart and you say,
20:44I can't go on. And the trigger that keeps you going is the fact you truly believe in what you're
20:49doing and also you have the mental knowledge to know that it will get better, you will progress
20:55and you will get to your destination in the end. So when I was in Antarctica, the plane did disappear
21:01and I was left on my own and I knew I had 50 days in front of me to reach the geographic south pole.
21:07I'd spent three years preparing for this and telling everybody I was going to do it. So I had
21:12the weight of the world, if you like, upon my shoulders as I moved forward. But five days into
21:17the journey, I lost a key element to my expedition, which was my music, little iPod that I took with
21:24me. I lost it in the ice and yes, it was a white iPod that I lost. So I had absolutely nothing to
21:30think about but my own thoughts and the silence and looking around 360 of nothing actually played
21:37on my mind to the point where I pitched my tent middle of the day and I sat in it and I thought
21:43I can't do this anymore. This was five days into the journey and I spent 36 hours in that tent
21:49just going through my mind of giving in, giving in, giving in all the time. I know I'm an older
21:54man but I can be honest to you and say that I cried and I judged myself and what I was doing.
22:01And at that point I got on my satellite phone, I phoned my friend back in the UK who knew me
22:05really well and I said I want to give in and he talked me through what was wrong, how I could
22:11process things. He talked me back on my feet but he didn't make me move my feet. So I packed
22:17everything away then I stood looking at the path in front of me and I just put one foot in front
22:23of the other, one foot in front of the other. Kept on doing that for another thousand feet and that's
22:28how I reached the South Pole by just basically moving myself in the right direction. Remember
22:33Sarah asks a good question, how was the golden age of arctic exploration possible before hot
22:40hands? Which is what I want to know. Hot hands is like a pad that you can have in your hand, you
22:45break it and it warms up your hands. They're great if you're going skiing or if you're doing stuff
22:50like operating cameras and things like that but for what I do I try not to use artificial heat.
22:55It's a very short-term thing, it feels great at the time then that's taken away and I'm back to
23:00being cold again. It helps in sense of emergencies but I don't generally use them just to warm
23:06myself up. You've got to remember they didn't have these pads but what they did bring on their ships
23:13were things like musical instruments like pianos and guitars and they had bottles of whiskey and
23:19wine and rum and all these different foods on the ship and then they transported that to the ice
23:24and they took a lot of heavy equipment along with them. So even though they didn't have the comfort
23:28of hot hands they had the comfort of other things that we take for granted in normal life.
23:33So Tamsin VR asks how cold is it right now? Do we need to dress like arctic explorers?
23:39So you don't just put big jackets on, you have very very thin layers that you wear that are
23:44breathable, the trap air and you can have two or three of those on depending on how cold you are
23:50and then you have a middle layer on top and then if you're really really cold like if you're static
23:56and not using your body to generate heat then you can put a big down jacket on, zip it right up
24:01with your hat and everything to keep you nice and warm. But it all depends on what you're doing, if
24:06you're moving then your body will generate heat, if you're static then you will release heat from
24:12your body so you need to contain it. When you're in a tent at night and you're about to get into
24:16your minus 40 sleeping bag, so really great sleeping bags you need, the mistake a lot of
24:21people make is they think I'm really cold so they wear all their jackets and everything and they get
24:26into the sleeping bag and they start to freeze. The reason for that is because the sleeping bag
24:32is designed to contain the heat of the body, so you heat up the bag, the bag doesn't heat up you.
24:38So to wear less clothing in a sleeping bag is the important thing to do. What I do is I get into my
24:43sleeping bag and when it's freezing cold I do a little jog, I move around quite a lot and I generate
24:49a lot of heat then I put the bag up, zip it up and all that heat is then dispersed inside the bag
24:54and that's how you keep warm. So this is from Walter, how are igloos built and how do they keep
25:00warm? Igloos are built in igloo shape because it gives strength to the structure, if it just had
25:06walls then it'd be difficult to build a structured roof to it. Also the ice that is used has got very
25:13little water content so if you try to get the ice and scrudge it up like a snowball then it would
25:19just flake away in your hands because it hasn't got anything to bind it together. So that's why you
25:23cut bricks to build an igloo because it's more structural, a bit like polystyrene if you like.
25:28The igloos will keep you sheltered from the wind and you can actually light a fire inside or put
25:34your cooker on and that will then contain the heat inside. The only technical thing you need to know
25:40about is how those fumes are released outside. If it's sealed you can actually succumb to the fumes.
25:47So romantic spiral, walking to work today in a stormy winter weather made me realise I have
25:52zero survival instincts. Drop me alone in the middle of the arctic and I will give up within
25:58a day. If the average person was dropped into the same area that I operate in it would be a rapid
26:06decrease in their mental and physical state. There is a thing called arctic shock and that's the
26:11reality of where you are, the coldness that engulfs you, the wind that whips around you,
26:15the realisation that you're not going to be able to go into a building for the next two to three
26:20weeks can be quite intense on you. So arctic shock kicks in and basically that means that your body's
26:27telling you to give in at a very very early stage. So failure would be very very quick for them
26:32unless you have that backing of experience. So Simple Beauty asked so we're not going to talk
26:38about Antarctica melting. Well I've actually bought in some ice which has melted over the
26:44course of 12 years from Antarctica and from the arctic circle as well. So this is ice from the
26:50geographic north pole and this is ice from the geographic south pole. In Antarctica the ice is
26:57melting so fast and it's one of the most rapidly heating places on the planet so so much research
27:03is being taken out there with different teams from around the world and when it comes around to the
27:08arctic circle because it's an ocean obviously there's very very different patterns there but
27:13with the arctic it's very very different altogether because it's an ocean with land masses
27:18around it like Russia and Canada and places like that. So you've got ice crossing all the way from
27:24Russia all the way to Canada but that ice is depleting and as the ice melts the sea levels
27:30rise but how does that work because in an ice cube in a glass if the ice melts it stays the same level
27:36but because the ice is so vast it's got its own gravitational pull and it draws in water from
27:43oceans from around the planet and as it gets to the top of the world it freezes and that's why you
27:48get this beautiful ice mass on top of the planet but because the world is heating up this ice is
27:54melting and it's now dispersing the water back around the planet so sea levels rise and that's
28:00an explanation of what's happening at both poles. To the naked eye this looks very very clear at
28:06both poles but in the Antarctic one you've got ice which is sat on top of land mass so it's pure
28:14ice sat on top of there in a pure area and on this one you've got ice from the ocean the arctic ocean
28:21so I would imagine it's got salt content within this one though I haven't tested it but they are
28:27very very different in their content. Hedge Silence says how do we make fire in the snow? Well in my
28:34world as an explorer I don't make fires we haven't got any trees we've got nothing to burn it'd be
28:38wrong of me to burn anything out there anywhere environmentally so what I use to heat up my food
28:45is a little cooker we use fuel and we light that and it sets off the heat for the food but also
28:52heat for the tent as well so it warms me up at the same time and I go out and collect snow and ice
28:58and I melt that down boil it up and that's what I add to my food so actually the heater is a
29:04main source of survival. Cora writes what was your most unexpected arctic experience? One of the most
29:10memorable was you expect to see a polar bear in the arctic but one day a little lemon just decided
29:16to walk into the tent and it was a total shock a lemon's a little rodent and he just walked in like
29:21it well it was his home I took some photographs and didn't touch him at all and then he walked
29:27out and as I saw him walk out he sort of walked off into the ice and then just disappeared over
29:33a little bit of ice and I thought how does he survive in this wilderness? So those are all the
29:39questions thank you very much for them it's made me think about who I am as an explorer it's put
29:45me on my back foot you've occasionally made me smile as well so thanks for watching Polar Explorer
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