The Calm and Quiet Antarctic | Continent 7: Antarctica

[Music] The one thing that I really miss about being at home, honestly, is probably being able to move around and to exercise. Move in a straight line for a long time. Generally, my research is ship-based, so we're on a two or 300-ton research boat for a couple of months at a time. I try and get out into our small boats to see the outside world as much as possible when we're studying the animals, but you're pretty much confined to that small space. There's not a place you can get off and go for a hike as easily as you'd like to.

One of my favorite things to do here is get into a zodiac, and when you've got this nice calm stuff, it's just to cruise through it. The sound of the ice kind of rolling around and clinking is quite soothing, and every once in a while, you see a whale in here, and it's awesome. The Antarctic is a very distant place for a lot of people. It's an extreme place; it's a harsh place. The animals that are there are supremely adapted for that environment.

There are a lot of challenges that you face working in those conditions. There are technical issues of how well your equipment is going to hold up in an extreme condition. There are physical things, just about being really cold for a long period of time. You need a lot of dexterity to do some of these things, and the colder you are, the less able you are to do those things. I think it's sort of the combination of those two that can lead to things becoming dangerous if you're not completely focused on things or you can't do things as well as you need to.