Fast ice: rescue from Antarctica

This dramatic behind-the-scenes film charts the rescue of passengers stranded on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which had become trapped in heavy ice off the coast of East Antarctica over Christmas, becoming headline news around the world. Passengers and scientists describe their increasingly alarming predicament as icebergs threatened to collide with the stricken ship

Newscasters: minute by minute drama playing out on the frozen high seas

A rescue mission to free a ship trapped by thick ice in Antartica is running into major trouble this morning

conditions just too rough to reach the stranded ship

It's been nearly 100 hours since the Russian vessel first ran into trouble

and now they're trapped. Caught in a deep freeze, a helicopter will fly most of the passengers

to the Australian ice-breaker at the edge of the sea ice

This was the helicopter that began the rescue of 52 people

trapped in the antarctic

The power of the thing was enormous. It's like the whole air was vibrating

It literally came over the top of our heads and suddenly the down draft was awe inspiring

We were bundled into the helicopter

As we flew I was able to see the ice and to me it was an amazing thing

to actually see the ice stretching into the distance

I was amazed just to see how vast this field of ice was that we were all embedded in

It was phenomenal, the ice that had come around us

That flight left me thinking, I don't know how Shokalskiy's gonna get out of this

Shokalskiy could become a permanent feature of Antarctica

As a scientist Antarctica is just one of the most exciting regions of the world to work

There's so much we still need to understand and how it fits into the global system

It's an extreme environment and the key thing is you just have to try and anticipate what might change

so we left Bluff in southern New Zealand on 8th December

And there was a real buzz and excitement cos' this was the big one

this was 4 weeks heading south

The process of getting to Antarctica

by ship is a really exciting one

because you see the land drop behind you and then you're all alone on the sea

and it's an alien environment for many people

but also you're getting used to your fellow passengers

so you're starting to form not only a relationship with the ocean

but you're starting to forms relationships with people who you're going to be travelling with

very often for several weeks.

Half the team were full-time scientists looking at the full range

of the natural and physical sciences

from bird observations all the way through to the inner workings of the southern ocean

Each day it gets a little colder and then half way across you come to this extraordinary

biological boundary which is the edge of the cold water

of Antarctica, the polar front.

Beyond which the water is suddenly cold, Antarctic cold

and it was cold enough to support icebergs, so there is somewhere you start to see these

behemoths of ice, floating around like small countries.

Chunks of Antarctica which have snapped off and floated away

There was such excitement across all of the passengers once we started to see the first

penguins on ice flows as we went past.

I've spent a lot of my life watching Penguins

and they're constantly fascinating

there are a sentient being which we can have some connection with

because they're charming and upright and walking around seemingly

at ease and busily going about their business

This is a Weddell Seal

they don't have any land predators so they're very relaxed

they're very chilled seals and you can see this guy's not bothered

by us at all.

So when the biopsy hits a Seal it can only go so far and then

pops back out again and you can see here at the edge

the little bit of blubber there. I use the fur to look at

stable isotopes, to look at diet and to look at how far the animals have ranged

and with the skin we do genetics.

So although we've just biopsied him he's now rolling over and about to go to sleep

so it mustn't be too traumatic

Shokalskiy started getting into trouble when we left the edge of the fast ice

in the polinear near the Hodgeman Islands

and the ice was closing quickly around us

and throughout that night the captain and the officers fought very hard to get the vessel

out into open water and they couldn't.

There was too much ice closing in on the ship like a big vice

you could feel the ship banging into huge towers and bashing and lurching

and it was quite dramatic

and so we woke up the following morning to find the ship completely surrounded by ice

and not able to move.

It was this chaotic scene of jumbled block of ice almost like a derelict city

As the ship started to be pushed over by the pressure of the ice

it started to heel a little bit

I realised that we were fully embedded in that ice

and something significant was going to have to happen for us to get out of there

I was a little nervous about the psychological cocktail that we'd been thrown into

There were some people who were very concerned

people were encouraged to ask questions of the expedition leaders

Yesterday we were on the edge of the fast ice near the Hodgeman Islands

and we've moved about a mile and a half over night

trying to fight our way out of the pack ice which came round the ship yesterday afternoon

and this morning at about 8 o'clock the captain decided just to sit and wait for a while

Our circumstances got each day, hour by hour more and more difficult

at first it was OK 'we're stuck for a while and we'll just wait and we'll get out'

but then it changed.

24 hours later icebergs had come into our world.

The chill went through me to be honest

particularly when they started to talk about the possibility of icebergs moving within

600 meters of the bow.

There was the potential for those icebergs to run into the ship

and at that point the captain pushed the distress button

after our distress button was pushed the rescue co-ordination centre called on every resource

that they could to come to our assistance

So the closest help that we knew was coming our was was the Chinese ice-breaker called

Xue Long or the Snow Dragon and that was travelling from Perth to the Ross Sea

and that agreed to divert to help break us out.

We heard her on the VHF radio

"OK thank you"

We just got our first sight of the ship, it's about 9.5 miles away from us

that's a big moment because it means that

there's more of a psychological desire of the captain of the ship to get to us

once he can see us, we're not just a dot on a radar.

It was pushing through, coming towards and just thinking

oh my gosh, with any luck it could be here by the morning

which would be extraordinary, so people were very buoyant and very excited

(laughter)

I had a few hours sleep and woke about

6 and basically it was clear that the Xue Long hadn't really moved at all

Xue Long reached to within about six miles of us

and found the going very difficult and the captain has decided to turn around

that set the tone for the coming 5 days or so

every step of the way as that week unfolded

was in a sense a series of dissapointments

"The art class that we have scheduled is going on for 11 o'clock

in the dining room"

The mood became almost jovial

as we started to start things to find things to do and we set about to get a calendar

of events going which we all attended with enthusiasm

and if anything it became quite sort of surreal, it was quite boisterous considering

the situation we were in.

"The whole world is making a fuss, Big Brother House has nothing on us"

"the Guardian and the BBC are putting out news on you and me"

"It's a bloody great shame we're still stuck here"

Researchers and tourists rang in the New Year on frozen Antarctic Tundra

still stuck on a ship, locked in by thick ice.

To another rescue underway this evening, this one moving a bit more slowly.

When the ice first formed around the ship open water was just 2 miles away

We take this technology for granted ago but a couple of generations ago you would be deciding

which one to eat first!

In those days, our situation had deteriorated quite significantly

the Xue Long couldn't get to us and the captain of Xue Long decided that he would stay there

waiting within view of us until the Aurora Australis came into the picture

with the hope that the extra power of Aurora Australis would be able to cut us out

The Aurora Australis, which is the Australian Government ice-breaker came into the picture

from the very word go because they were tasked to come to our assistance

straight away but they were much further afield

Aurora Australis, Shokalskiy

"Shokalskiy, Aurora Australis go ahead"

after very hard effort from Aurora Australis the captain told us

that he wasn't able to get to our position. Once again

our world was flipped on its head because it meant

that decisions had to be made, whether to evacuate the ship or not

"we're readying people with the possibility of a quick exit but we'll stand by waiting

for results of this ice reconnaissance"

"OK, copy that, thank you"

This is the Milo powder that we are using to mark the helipad

so where the helicopter is supposed to land

we're just marking it basically a straight line around the perimeter

right there in the middle we also mark the 'H'

that's what they're aiming for, so we'll try to land as close to it as possible

right in the centre of that

There's a level of tension, some people are a bit concerned

I think one of the things is that you're going from the known to the unknown

There's a step which is a box up to a two step ladder

It was exciting, I found it personally exciting because I had to be on the ball

all the time

the pilot looked at me an gave me the thumbs up, you know

and then I went towards the helicopter and they started jumping out

and they threw out an incredible number of planks

wooden planks on to the snow and I thought, what the hell's going on here?

then I realised what they were going to do was to use those planks as the basis

for the proper helipad because when the helicopter landed

it actually sunk into the snow

"cozy, it's very cozy"

"this is fantastic!"

Going past the Xue Long and seeing her beset

as well made me feel sick

There's a mixture of feelings and emotions because

I was relieved that the operation had gone well

I wasn't relieved to be out of there because I loved being there

I'd be happy to still be there now, in a tent!

When we booked on this ship that I hadn't seen in 10 years, hadn't been on here for a long time

and the voyage leader Leanne grabbed me and held me and said 'welcome home

you're back' and she didn't even know me!

I just thought fuck how did you know me and she said

I remember your name I've seen your name on the lists and it's this sense of community

in place it's really special

Newscasters: Dozens of people trapped by ice at the bottom of the world are finally on their way home

...until about mid-January to get to the island of Tasmania from which they will finally fly home

...in the Australian port of Hobart they faced the cameras

and a barrage of questions on how their voyage went so terribly wrong

We certainly didn't go into that environment thinking there was a chance we might get caught

we don't look for those events, far from it we try to avoid those events

and it's just really unfortunate that we got caught by this extreme event

that basically trapped us.

I can rarely think of a summer season in Antarctica where everything has gone exactly as planned

there are always things that come up that are impossible to predict.

The Aurora Australis was delayed by 2 weeks in getting back to Hobart

and that will have consequences for the next voyages

It's very intimately linked; operations, logistics and science programmes

the ripple effect of any delay will magnify throughout the season

We were not in that situation irresponsibly, we were in that situation

wittingly, we have dealt with

that situation, extraordinarily well, with ship, crew, passengers sane and healthy

and on their way home

and with a group of people who have

had a life changing experience

and that's amazing