In April of this year, two Dutch polar explorers, Marc Cornelissen and Philip de Roo, set off from Resolute Bay in the Canadian Arctic. They were headed for Bathurst Island, a journey of 400km that was due to take around a month. This was part of the Last Ice Survey expedition to gather data about snow and ice thickness for York University, Ontario. They would walk and ski across a region known as the Last Ice Area, where summer sea ice is expected to be most resilient to climate change.
A few days into their trip, when they were still in Resolute Bay preparing for the hard month ahead, Philip found Marc’s sled from a previous unsuccessful expedition being used by a local hunter. In one of the many short voice recordings which they uploaded each day during their journey, Marc talks about what a special feeling it is to be back in the region and how pleased he is to be there with his trusted expedition partner Philip. “That [last expedition] was a failure, but if we make it there this time, it will be a beautiful contrast.”
In their final voice recording, uploaded on 28 April and since then listened to almost 24,000 times, Marc talks about how unseasonably warm it is – “too warm actually” – and mentions that within 60 minutes of starting their journey that day they were skiing in their underwear. “We think we can see thin ice in front of us which is quite interesting. We’re going to research some more if we can.”
On 29 April, about 200km south of Bathurst Island, they encountered sea ice so unexpectedly thin that they fell through. Both died. The accident shocked the polar exploration and research community.
“Marc and Philip’s deaths serve as a warning to anyone working in the region,” says Dr George Divoky, director of the not-for-profit organisation Friends of Cooper Island. “As tragic as their deaths are, they have heightened my awareness of how important it is not to become too comfortable in how I deal with the Arctic. The next decade will present new dangers and threats.”
You might think that the unexpectedly thin ice points to the effects of global warming, but the scientists are adamant that no research conclusions should be drawn from the accident. Professor Appy Sluijs, who works in the earth sciences department at the University of Utrecht, was a close friend of both Marc and Philip. “The area they were working in is considered to have ample sea ice and is projected to have sufficient sea ice in the near future for these kinds of expeditions,” he says. “A couple of hundred metres from where they were, there would have been far less risk.” Nevertheless, all future scenarios imply a significant reduction in seasonal and multi-year ice in the Arctic. The kind of fieldwork they were carrying out is likely to become more and more difficult, while the data it provides becomes ever more important.
I first met Marc and Philip in 2005. I was a student in the Climate Change College, a programme run by WWF International and Ben and Jerry’s to educate young people about the environment. It involved several months of intense training, ending with a fortnight in Greenland where we camped out on the ice sheet to do fieldwork.
Led by Marc and Philip, we gathered ice and snow measurements to validate the data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite. Scientists have long been aware that the extent of Arctic ice cover is changing, but they know far less about the thickness of that ice. Ground camps enable researchers to make accurate recordings and ensure that CryoSat’s radar is reflecting off the ice itself, not just compacted snow.
Peter Nienow, professor of glaciology at Edinburgh University and one of the scientists we worked with in Greenland, explains how crucial the work on the ground is. “Validation work is essential because without measurements that we know are accurate, we cannot be confident of any observed trends in ice-mass change. A small error in estimates of elevation, when extrapolated across a whole ice sheet, can lead to large imbalances in estimates of mass change, and thus contribution or otherwise to sea level.”
Marc was always quick to point out that he was not a scientist himself: he referred to his model of working as a “feed in – reach out” approach. He trained as an architect at Delft University of Technology and after graduation decided to make “one last expedition” before entering the world of work. He never made it to the office, instead becoming a full-time explorer. Over the years he travelled to the polar regions more than 20 times and developed a reputation as a highly experienced, knowledgeable expedition leader.
In 2011 Marc founded Cold Facts, an organisation that supports polar science by co- ordinating research activity between scientists, explorers and local populations, and then promotes the results of those collaborations to a wider audience. Additionally, he developed equipment and protocols that made it easier for other polar travellers to do simple measurements and communicate their findings.
Marc also spent time developing effective polar bear tripwire alarms and shared these with other researchers. Dr Divoky recalls: “He sent me four of them shortly after we met in Barrow. Since then those alarms have regularly scared away polar bears and woken me up as increasing ice retreat has driven growing numbers of bears to the island. Marc’s alarms continue to be a part of my daily camp life and, of course, deploying them this summer has been emotional.”
Before leaving for the Last Ice Area expedition in March, Marc shared a picture on Twitter of his most recent alarm. “Double piezo makes for a screaming mix. Best so far. Not sure my neighbours like it…”
Marc and Philip’s other strength was that they understood that, even within the community of people who want to protect the polar regions, there are many different motivations. At the Climate Change College experts spoke on everything from biodiversity to social justice and economics. “Marc had a great legacy on involving business in his projects,” says Sluijs. “Engaging companies is a crucial aspect because they can provide possibilities that public parties cannot. Both Marc and Philip were great leaders in this way.”
Marc made the point again and again during our training that for campaigners to have a truly compelling argument there must be a strong body of evidence. He urged us to know our facts, to make sure that we wouldn’t be caught out and have people dismiss our argument because we’d got the figures wrong.
My experience with the Climate Change College led to full-time work as an environmental campaigner in Scotland. I often called and asked one or the other of them for advice. We kept in touch and I watched their research with keen interest. Each time they shared photos and stories from their fieldwork, I was reminded of the long evenings we had spent huddled together in a tent in Greenland, talking, laughing and drinking red wine with chunks of ice floating in it. Living in such an isolated environment had brought us close very quickly.
There is sometimes a temptation when you lose people too soon and under difficult circumstances to romanticise their lives, to suddenly start referring to them as heroes. But in my mind Marc and Philip have always been heroes. They regularly pushed themselves – both mentally and physically – to their absolute limits because they cared so much about the Arctic and felt it was their responsibility to help protect it.
“Philip and I met regularly in Utrecht to have a beer and talk about how we could help each other,” says Sluijs. “We wrote a proposal together and although what he wrote was absolutely outstanding in terms of content, the text was all jumbled and his spelling was terrible because he was seriously dyslexic. He constantly pushed himself to improve on that. I will also never forget how Marc fell asleep with a cigar in his mouth after a busy day during a project in Spitsbergen. We took it out and let him sleep. ‘Tired’ was not a word that often appeared in his dictionary.”
Philip was just 30 at the time of the accident. He celebrated his birthday on the ice during that last expedition, and uploaded a joyful, laughing message about waking up to a decorated tent, a birthday song, and the cake and presents that Marc had brought along. He spent his teenage years volunteering as a Ranger for WWF and in 2000, at the age of 15, was rewarded for his efforts with a place on Xpedition Cool, a month-long research assignment in Antarctica. It was on this trip that he met Marc.
Marc and Philip were not thrillseekers, although they were a great deal of fun. They were experienced explorers who clearly understood the risks of expeditions in the polar regions. In a 2011 TEDx talk at Utrecht University, Marc spoke about how much he hated encountering open water on expeditions. His nose wrinkled in disgust as he introduced a video of a colleague in a dry suit, slowly crawling through water and breaking the surface ice with his elbows as he goes. It looked utterly grim.
In the short voice recordings which Marc and Philip took turns to upload each day during their journey across the Last Ice Area they made observations about the ice and the weather conditions, about the challenges of settling into a new routine with their dog Kimmik, who at first refused to pull his own sled. But as well as talking about the challenges, they also talked about the small pleasures of life on the ice. You can hear in their voices the deep satisfaction they got from sitting in their sleeping bags with a hot drink, or from tucking into a bowl of warm food at the end of a long day. They included many small details that made their experiences accessible and interesting, and despite the number of times they had undertaken such journeys, neither man lost his enthusiasm for the beauty of the Arctic landscape. It is something they mentioned in almost every recording – the blue skies, the pretty sunsets, the interesting formations of ice.
There are several painful ironies about the loss of Marc and Philip. In a blog for National Geographic back in March, Marc wrote about the fact that this area of ice was the very same one where he started an unsuccessful expedition back in 1996. Although he had been back to the Poles almost every year since then, the memory was still one that came back before this trip. “This unsuccessful expedition is the basis of everything I’ve done afterwards. And now, completely unintentionally, I return to the same ice field.”
On 29 April the Dutch base camp for the expedition received an emergency message from their tracer. An urgent pick-up was requested, but no further details were available. Poor weather conditions meant that attempts to transport a recovery team to the area by helicopter had to be abandoned. It was almost a week before a team of local volunteers, co-ordinated by Canadian police, was able to reach the area on snowmobiles and recover Marc’s body. At the time of writing, Philip has still not been found.
I learned from them that science and campaigning – feed in and reach out – are two sides of the same coin. Progress is often slow. One man digging a hole in the ice may not feel like he is achieving much. One man standing in front of a lecture theatre may not feel like he is changing anything. But when you learn to see that personal effort in the context of collective action it feels a lot more powerful. Everything is easier if you do it with a smile on your face, and all the best days end with hot chocolate and whisky.
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