A year long expedition spotlights night life in the Arctic winter
Allison Fong dangles over the edge of a “river” running through a massive chunk of sea ice floating between the North Pole and Russia’s Komsomolets Island. The river cracked open in the ice just a few days ago, exposing the Arctic Ocean below. Already starting to freeze over, the river’s surface is a dark scar in the white landscape. The crack could open further, destabilizing or even cleaving the 3-kilometer-wide floe. To avoid falling into the hypothermia-inducing waters (which hover at –1.8° Celsius), Fong distributes her weight on her hands and knees and is tethered to a stronger piece of ice a few meters away. She looks at ease as she pulls a chunk of recently frozen ice from the crack and squeezes it slightly. It seems solid, but it compresses like a cube of Jell-O, which means the chunk hasn’t completely frozen and still contains small chambers of liquid water. Those chambers are home to microscopic organisms that...