After a month aboard a Russian research ship, Alok Jha and Laurence Topham found themselves trapped in the grip of the ice – and an international row over whether the expedition should have been there in the first place

The whirring twin rotor blades of the helicopter made so much noise that, once inside, it was impossible to hear anything else. Twelve of us, in full cold-weather gear, had picked our way carefully across a snow-covered ice field and climbed into the windowless compartment at the back of the aircraft. We squashed ourselves against the walls, the remaining space jammed with luggage and cargo boxes. The two back doors slid shut and the helicopter, fully laden, lifted into the air.

Over the pilot’s shoulder, we craned our necks to glimpse the stacked and tumbled ice below, stretching to the horizon in all directions. We had been stuck here, off the coast of Antarctica, for more than a week. Several icebreakers had tried and failed to break a path to our ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, but seeing the endless field of compressed ice from above, and the seemingly tiny Shokalskiy embedded within it, brought the situation into a whole new focus. For many of us, it played on our minds that we were leaving behind the Shokalskiy and its crew, our friends, to an uncertain fate.

This ship had been our home for almost a month. Now it might become a permanent feature of the landscape.

Getting to Antarctica by ship involves sailing the roughest sea in the world. The Akademik Shokalskiy left port in Bluff, at the southernmost tip of New Zealand, on a sunny Sunday afternoon and within hours the Southern Ocean was tossing it from side to side at alarming angles. Everything that could move inside moved. Walking around became a careful game of trying to predict where the walls and floor might be next.

This choppiness comes from strong westerly winds nicknamed the “furious 50s” and “screaming 60s”, after the latitudes around which they blow, by the fishermen, whalers and sealers who worked in this part of the world a century ago. Here, the Southern Ocean is uninterrupted by land for its entire circumference around the Earth, allowing winds to circulate freely and build to phenomenal speeds. The first evening at sea, many passengers were missing at dinner, lying in their bunks, dipping in and out of waves of nausea.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The MV Akademik Shokalskiy crosses the Southern Ocean as it makes its way towards East Antarctica as part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition

On board were 22 Russian crew members and 52 passengers, part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 (AAE); half of these were scientists, half members of the public who had paid around A$18,000 (£9,700) to work as science assistants on the journey south. The Shokalskiy’s destination, 10 days away, was Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica, a historic part of the continent first visited a century ago by the great British-Australian explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson. A contemporary of Shackleton, Amundsen and Scott, Mawson led the original AAE in 1911. The modern expedition, led by University of New South Wales climate scientist Chris Turney, intended to follow in his footsteps and record how this remote part of the world has changed in the past 100 years; it would look at the impact of climate change on animal populations and on the temperature and saltiness of the sea. I was invited along to report the journey, with film-maker Laurence Topham: too often, journalists see only the results of work that has taken years to produce, missing the many twists and turns, and the humanity of how science is really done.

The scientists began their observations, with help from the volunteers, as soon as the sea-sickness subsided. They counted bird populations from the bridge, to monitor how the species changed as we progressed south. Oceanographers spent a 40-hour stint throwing hi-tech probes overboard at regular intervals to measure the temperature and saltiness of the ocean. Ecologists looked for seals to work out what they were eating.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Map: Alex Purcell

As we sailed farther south, the water and air got colder, the ship felt more alone in the rolling sea and the days got longer until, eventually, the sun never left the sky. The passengers, strangers at first, got closer as they swapped stories and took part in lectures, talked about their lives back home and shared meals in the two small dining rooms.

Antarctica imposed itself into this tight-knit world one morning when we awoke to calm seas and a series of loud bangs, sounding worryingly like explosions, coming from the bow of the ship. Stepping on to the foggy deck, we saw brilliant white chunks of ice, some the size of football pitches, surrounding the ship. “You go from rolling open water to suddenly calm, almost serene, broken floes of ice, like shattered glass,” Turney says. “And as you break and weave your way through, everything is so quiet.”

Making our way through the floes, we spotted small groups of Adélie and Emperor penguins, which showed a passing interest in our ship before turning away or sliding off the ice and into the water. As the ship crunched and ground its way along, we saw our first iceberg materialise from the haze like a developing photograph. Tens of metres high, hundreds of metres long, this mass of ice dwarfed our vessel. Sailing alongside one edge, we saw that its surface, perfect white from a distance, was lined with crevasses and pitted with caves, out of which glowed an electric blue light.

Harsh, savage and unpredictable

What looked to me like an office block had to previous explorers conjured castles and cathedrals. Ben Maddison, a historian and Antarctic veteran making his tenth journey south on the Shokalskiy, told me, “In the middle of the 19th century, gothic sensibilities started to creep into explorers’ accounts – seeing in the shapes of the ice the ruins of civilisation, collapsed buildings, cathedrals, minarets. I love the way the ice has always reflected contemporary concerns, culture and perceptions.”



The Shokalskiy reached the edge of the ice at Commonwealth Bay on an azure-skied afternoon, eight days after leaving port. Out on deck, it was incongruously warm. Icebergs glittered on the sea behind us; ahead rose mountains and the dome of the polar icecap. The captain dropped anchor and, after the scientists had unloaded their equipment and checked that the surface was safe to walk on, we were allowed down the gangplank.

There are a lot of things to get used to the first time you spend any time in Antarctica. The vistas of tumbled ice, for example, that look like Martian landscapes and which you have to continually remind yourself are part of the same planet on which you have grown up. The sheer distance you can see in every direction and gigantic scale of the mountains and walls of ice. The total absence of plants. The sensory disorientation that comes with true silence, no natural smells and the endless white of the ice that often bleeds into the sky.



All of these details, however, are just the veneer of beauty that overlays Antarctica. The continent is, above all, harsh, savage, and unpredictable. It is an extreme place that is uninhabitable and which cannot be bent to fit the needs of its visitors.

We stayed close to the ship that evening, entranced by penguins waddling around the edge of the sea ice. We arrived back, exhilarated, well after midnight. With the sun so high and bright in the sky, and no sign of tiredness in any of the group, it might as well have been midday.

Nobody owns Antarctica. Since 1961, the Antarctic Treaty has bound its signatories (more than 50 at the last count) to using the continent only for peaceful purposes, with the priority being scientific research (no disposal of nuclear waste, no military exercises, no weapons testing). “It’s one of the few places where there haven’t been military flare-ups,” says John Shears, head of operations at the British Antarctic Survey. “Even during the Falklands war, there were friendly relations between British and Argentine bases here.” And even as more countries have signed up and commercial activities such as fishing and tourism have expanded, territorial claims have stayed in the background. Instead countries will quietly assert themselves by building more bases: the US has six, the UK two, Australia three and China four.

Oceanographers found the water under the sea ice was less salty than a century ago. This could have an impact on climate all over the world

A week after arriving at the Antarctic coast, the Shokalskiy’s passengers were out on the Hodgeman Islands, a scrap of land bound by 10km of ice. The ship had dropped anchor at Cape de la Motte and the AAE members were being ferried by boat and all-terrain vehicles to the islands, so they all got a chance to walk on the Antarctic continent itself. The week had been eventful, the highlight being two successful journeys by small teams across 65km of ice to carry out research and conservation work on Douglas Mawson’s huts at Cape Denison. No one had thought that journey, two years in the planning, would be possible until the AAE team carefully picked their way through the tumbled, melting ice field, on vehicles that were, in essence, boats with wheels.

The oceanographers found that the water under the sea ice at Commonwealth Bay was less salty than a century ago. This shift could have major implications for how water and heat move around the world’s oceans. Global currents are driven by cold, salty water descending to the depths and pulling in warmer water from the equator; a change at the poles could have an impact on climate all over the world, way into the future. Ornithologists also found big changes in the penguin populations near Mawson’s huts, a result of local changes in climate. The colonies were scattered and silent, littered with dead chicks and abandoned eggs.

The excursion to the islands would be our last stop on the continent before we began the long journey home. In the evening, however, it became clear that something was not quite right. “The ice was closing quickly around us and throughout that night the captain fought very hard to get the vessel out into open water,” says Greg Mortimer, AAE’s head of logistics and a veteran of more than 100 visits to Antarctica. “But he couldn’t: there was too much ice closing in, like a big vice.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shokalskiy icebound in Antarctica

These were not the kind of young, thin ice floes the Shokalskiy had been easily cutting through in the days before, but dense chunks of ice that had grown tough over many winters. The following morning, Christmas Eve, brought an unexpectedly peaceful scene: the ship was surrounded, unable to move. From the bridge, Mortimer says, they could see open water two or three nautical miles away.

We were around two miles from the Antarctic coast and 1,500 miles from Hobart, Tasmania. South-westerly winds were pushing thick ice floes against the continent, pinning the ship in place. We waited for the ice to open up: if the wind direction changed for even a few hours, it could create a lead through the ice.

On Christmas Day, however, the situation was worse, and the Shokalskiy was even farther from open water. The captain, Igor Kiselev, sent out a distress call, triggered by the movement of two nearby icebergs. As ice floes move, so does any ship within them, but icebergs move independently. “You see one that is 50m high but there’s probably 250m below the water,” Mortimer says. “An iceberg can go through pack ice as if it didn’t exist.”

Scientists questioned the ship’s research aims: why had it ventured into an area of sea known to be prone to pack ice?

The distress call was relayed to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) office in Canberra, whose emergency response division concluded that the weather conditions (0°C and winds of up to 90kph) and the possibility that the Shokalskiy might get damaged and lose heat or power was reason enough to warrant a rescue. Amsa issued a broadcast to local shipping on Christmas morning. The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long (”Snow Dragon”) and French vessel L’Astrolabe were the first to say they would come to our aid. “I felt it was our duty to come to the place as quick as we could,” says Wang Jianzhong, captain of the Xue Long since 2010 and a 19-year veteran of the polar regions. His ship was on its way to build a new base on the Antarctic coast but he agreed to divert towards the Shokalskiy, then 600 nautical miles away. The Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, which was several days away resupplying Casey, the Australian Antarctic base, was also asked to assist.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Map: Alex Purcell

On the Shokalskiy, one of the paying passengers, Adelaide-based Terry Gostlow, remembers a stunned silence after we were told about the distress call: “I knew enough about how far we were from anywhere to know this was a serious situation. A chill went through me.” But as the passengers settled into waiting mode, “the mood became almost jovial, as we found things to do and got a calendar of events going. It was quite boisterous, considering the situation we were in.”

Two days later, the Shokalskiy had its first radio contact with the Xue Long, 40 miles away. “Several hours later, we saw Xue Long out of the mist on our horizon,” Mortimer says. “That was a fantastic moment, because it humanised the situation. We weren’t just a radio call – all of a sudden we were humans there, stuck on a ship.”

Out on deck that evening, we watched the Xue Long, a red dot on the horizon. “It was making great progress,” Turney says. “It was pushing through, coming towards us, and I was thinking, gosh, with any luck it could be here by morning.”

Next morning, though, the Xue Long was still a dot. “The visibility was very poor,” Captain Wang says. “The sea ice became more and more dense – it was very difficult for us to break it.” By now, L’Astrolabe had arrived at the ice edge, but its icebreaking capability was even less than Xue Long’s. With both icebreakers unable to reach the ship, the Shokalskiy would have to wait for the Aurora Australis, still several days away.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sunrise over the Shokalskiy

‘Our world was flipped on its head’



Meanwhile, the world’s media had picked up on the story. What began as a few interview requests from New Zealand and Australian radio stations soon multiplied into interest from all over the world. For eight days after Christmas, there was a near-continuous demand for updates and interviews, particularly from US networks. On New Year’s Eve, we broadcast live to CNN’s news anchor Anderson Cooper, streaming footage from the top deck of the Shokalskiy to Times Square in New York.



There was controversy, too: scientists questioned the AAE’s research aims and asked why the ship had ventured into an area of sea known to be prone to pack ice. They argued that the scientific work being carried out by the Australian, French and Chinese icebreakers, all diverted to help the Shokalskiy, would be significantly affected. By the time the Aurora Australis arrived at the edge of the ice field, every move was being tracked by news reporters around the world.

In that time, another 20 nautical miles of ice had blown in between us and open water. After more than a day of battling against it, the master of the Aurora Australis, Murray Doyle, decided he would not be able to get his ship anywhere near the Shokalskiy: the ice was too thick and he had neither the fuel nor the time to break it.

“Once again, our world was flipped on its head,” said Mortimer. It soon became clear that the only way to get people off the Shokalskiy as soon as possible would be to use the Xue Long’s helicopter, called the Xue Ying (which translates as “Snow Eagle”), to take people onto the Aurora Australis.

Mortimer, liaising with the Chinese and Australian captains from the bridge of the Shokalskiy, took the whole day on January 2 for the pieces to fall into place and for the rescue to begin.

There would be five helicopter flights from the Shokalskiy to the Aurora Australis, each with 12 passengers and as much luggage and scientific equipment as they could cram in. Captain Kiselev decided that he and the Russian crew of the Shokalskiy would remain on board and await further icebreaker assistance to get his ship out of the ice. There were 22 crew members who stayed on board. The passengers shook hands with some of the sailors who were helping us out, and with parting hugs, we wished each other luck.

Ben Maddison’s job that day was to safely guide the groups of 12 passengers from the Shokalskiy for each flight, across the ice and onto the helicopter. “The power of the [helicopter] was enormous. It’s like the whole air was vibrating with the wash of those two rotors,” he says. “We were walking through snow that was, in places, a metre or so deep and people were plunging up to their knees or further into the snow. Doing that amidst a very significant down draft, with ice crystals blowing into your face and a powerful noise - added up to an intimidating environment for most people.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Passengers prepare to evacuate by helicopter

Mortimer was on the last flight, six hours after the rescue began. He says the ice he saw was “phenomenal. It was huge, multi-year-old, under extreme pressure, so that the edges of the floes had crumpled into towers as they bashed together. There was virtually no channel of open water between us and the Aurora Australis.”



It took the Shokalskiy and the Xue Long another week to break free, as they waited for the wind to turn and open up leads in the ice. The Shokalskiy arrived safely back in Bluff on 14 January.

‘We were in the wrong place at the wrong time’



Though their summer programme has been delayed, the Chinese crew were celebrated at home for their role in our rescue. President Xi Jinping, who reportedly kept a close eye on the ship’s progress, has previously said that China needs to be ready to take advantage of the resources in the polar regions. The country is building a second icebreaker, bigger than the Xue Long, to expand its activities; Xue Long is scouting locations for a fifth Chinese base at Terra Nova Bay.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Passengers on the helipad of the Aurora Australis

“There are obvious political reasons why people are interested in the Antarctic region,” says Mike Sparrow, executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. “Part of it is to be seen as a global player – people want to be a member of a lot of these international treaties.” India, Russia, Japan, Germany and many others maintain interests here. The Madrid Protocol, signed in 1991, bans mining or other exploitation of the environment; but the protocol is due for renegotiation in 2048 – and as the technology to drill around the continent becomes available, it’s far from clear that its signatories will maintain the ban.

What caused the massive breakout of old ice from the edge of the continent, which moved and trapped the Shokalskiy, is still unclear. “We’re looking at the satellite information, we’re working with colleagues in Germany and elsewhere to try and get a feeling for what happened there,” says Turney. “Whatever it was, something happened which mobilised this massive amount of very old thick ice, and then basically caught us and then built up progressively over the next 40 hours.”

But for veterans, the unexpected nature of Antarctica is part of life there. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mortimer says. “We were not in that situation irresponsibly; we were in that situation wittingly. And we have dealt with it extraordinarily well, with ship, crew and passengers sane and healthy. It’s hard, sitting in your lounge, in a gentle part of the world, to understand the forces that are at work. But they’re much bigger than puny human efforts. They have been in the past, and they will be in the future.”