Shackleton

On World Oceans Day, we turn our attention beneath the Arctic ice.

In May 2024, scientists aboard the research vessel Kronprins Haakon travelled north through the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard, exploring one of the least understood regions on Earth. Using REV Ocean’s 6,000-metre-rated ROV Aurora, the team surveyed deep-sea habitats including the Knipovich Ridge, Jøtul Vent Field and Molløy Deep – the deepest point in the Arctic Ocean at 5,550 metres.

What they found was extraordinary.

From hydrothermal vent communities powered by chemosynthesis rather than sunlight, to vast sponge gardens, cold-water corals, sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers and microscopic organisms that drive nutrient cycling across the ocean floor, the expedition revealed a hidden world thriving in extreme conditions.

Among the discoveries were shrimp covered in bacteria capable of converting toxic chemicals into energy, a reminder that life can flourish in places once thought impossible.

These ecosystems are not only scientifically significant, they are increasingly vulnerable. As ocean temperatures rise and interest in deep-sea resource extraction grows, documenting and understanding these environments has never been more urgent.

Through world reknowned polar photographer and friend of Shackleton’s, Martin Hartley ’s photography, the creatures surviving and thriving in these remote polar landscapes and the oceans that sustain them are brought into view, helping tell the stories of places few will ever see, but all of us depend upon.

The more we discover, the more there is to protect.

📍 South Georgia, 1916

On this day in 1916, the whalers of Stromness saw three ghostly figures emerge from the South Georgian wilderness, filthy, frostbitten and half-dead. They were Sir Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean, presumed lost for months.

Their journey was unprecedented: 800 miles across the world’s most brutal seas in a 22-foot lifeboat, followed by a crossing of South Georgia’s unmapped, glaciated mountains with only 50 feet of rope, a carpenter’s adze and extraordinary willpower.

The final descent was as desperate as the rest:

“We’ll slide,” Shackleton said. “It’s a devil of a risk. But we’ve got to take it.”

Tied together, the three men tobogganed into darkness towards Fortuna Bay and miraculously survived – a descent so notorious we borrowed its name for our first alpine ski suit. After 36 hours without sleep or shelter, they reached Stromness, unrecognisable.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Shackleton,” came the reply. “We have lost our ship and come over the island.”

This was the turning point in the Endurance ordeal. Every man would survive. Not one life lost.

As Shackleton later reflected:

“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had ‘suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.’ We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”

Photographs from slide 2 onwards by , who last year, alongside and the team from , attempted to retrace Shackleton’s route through South Georgia.

Despite modern equipment and mapping technology, the team could not complete the full traverse, returning to Fortuna Bay by ship to make the descent from the Stromness side. With the luxury of time to plan their journey were greated with beautiful weather conditions compared to the bleak icy darkness Shackleton and his men endured.