[Narrator] The far North.

A storied place of daring exploration and untamed wilderness.

But the high Arctic is also a place of rapid change.

[Ingrid] The temperature in the Arctic is rising at a faster rate than the rest of the world.

[Signe Maria] Up here we see the changes most.

The glacier fronts are literally disappearing in front of our eyes here.

It goes very fast.

[Narrator] These changes are taking place at a time when modern science doesn'’’t have a full understanding of how Arctic ecosystems work during all times of the year.

[Jorgen] The polar night, that's defined as the period when the sun is below the horizon, 24hours a day.

The length of the polar night varies according to latitude.

At the pole it lasts for 185 days.

So, at the pole, there's only one night and one day.

At the Arctic Circle, it lasts for one day.

Then there is everything inbetween.

[Kirstin] It's basically dark 24/7.

And so that has a huge impact on the fjord ecosystem.

If there's no light, then there's no primary production.

[Kharis] There are algae in the ocean that are phytoplankton that photosynthesize to create energy and all other organisms are reliant on that energy.

[Kirstin] During the polar night when the base of the food web is basically cut out, for decades it was just kind of assumed that everything else stops.

There's no food.

[Jorgen] So this period when it's dark had remained completely unsampled and studied for many, many years.

[Narrator] Targeted research into polar night ecology didn'’’t begin until 2009, after an accidental discovery made scientists realize this wasn'’’t a dormant period in the ocean after all.

[Jorgen] It came as a massive surprise.

[Kirstin] And the more you look into it, the more you find that there's actually high activity during the polar night.

[Kharis] It's an important piece of the overall ecology of the ecosystem to understand, to tie it in with what's going on in the summer.

[Kirstin] Looking at the seasonal patterns in the polar regions is a huge knowledge gap.

So, filling that in is important for that very base level, fundamental understanding of how does the earth work.

And then the second layer is that the Arctic is very rapidly changing.

We have warming water, receding sea ice, melting glaciers, things like that happening.

So, understanding the consequences of that change is a major question for the scientific community right now.

[Narrator] What tiny animals are active in the ocean during the polar night?

And how are they able to survive without their main food source?

[Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by The Batchelor Foundation encouraging people to preserve and protect America'’’s underwater resources.

Additional funding was provided by Trish & Dan Bell and by The Parrot Family Endowment for Environmental Education.

[Narrator] January.

A time when the northernmost latitudes are wrapped in perpetual darkness.

[Ingrid] So we are in the what we call the high Arctic.

It's 79 degrees north.

It's the northernmost settlement in the world.

[Jorgen] Here the polar night lasts for approximately four months.

[Signe Maria] It's like you're tucked into a blanket of darkness.

It'’’s quite spectacular.

[Jorgen] When the solar light becomes dimmer, then the lunar light becomes much more important.

The stars, the aurora, the light climate simply changes quite a lot.

I think the, the polar night is the most beautiful time of year.

[Kirstin] We are in NyAlesund, Svalbard.

Svalbard is an archipelago halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

[Narrator] The small Norwegian community of NyAlesund is home to the world'’’s northernmost yearround research station.

NyAlesund has a storied history.

Whalers were the first in the area, followed by coal miners more than a hundred years ago.

[Ingrid] And it started in the early nineteen hundreds with the Kings Bay Coal Company.

[Narrator] Given its close proximity to the North Pole, NyAlesund has also served as an expedition base.

Famous Norwegian Polar Explorer Roald Amundsen and his team departed from here when in 1926 they became the first to fly over the North Pole in an airship.

In later years, the coal mines were shut down, and the community transitioned to a research base.

[Ingrid] Because there was a big accident in 1962 and that was the end of the mining period.

But as NyAlesund had a very good infrastructure, it was in a very good position here at this peninsula to use it for research.

[Narrator] On location yearround since 1968, today the Norwegian Polar Institute, or NPI for short, implements the research strategy on site, which focuses on four flagship disciplines.

[Ingrid] It's atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems, marine biology and oceanography and glaciology.

[Narrator] Kings Bay, meanwhile, still owns NyAlesund and maintains all the infrastructure.

[Signe Maria] Kings Bay is basically the facilitator for the station.

We organize transportation, we provide logistics solutions for all the institutions.

[Narrator] Ten institutions run by eleven countries have a permanent or semipermanent presence in NyAlesund.

Despite its remote location, the community not only boasts stateoftheart research facilities, but also a lot of creature comforts.

[Signe Maria] The food is, you know, beyond everything.

And it's a lot of treats that we have up here.

You can feel quite at home I think even if you're here for a longer time.

You can have dogs, there's a gym, there's a sauna, there's a jacuzzi.

So, it's very up to date living wise.

[Kirstin] It's a great place to come to.

It's very well set up.

[Narrator] Dr. Kirstin MeyerKaiser is based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, in Massachusetts.

[Kirstin] The United States does not have a research station here, but nevertheless we came here because it is such a logistically easy place to do research in the polar night and in the high Arctic because of the support from NPI and from Kings Bay.

[Ingrid] The Norwegian Polar Institute hosts scientists from countries that do not have an institution from their own country to represent them.

[Narrator] Kirstin and her Ph.D. student Kharis Shrage are studying some of the tiniest animals that are active during the polar night.

[Kharis] Our specific interest is in the early life history stages of all of the organisms that are living on the sea floor that do not have a backbone.

[Narrator] To find out what larvae are present this time of year, the researchers brave the arctic cold to collect plankton samples in Kongsfjorden the local fjord.

[Kharis] So, to understand the larvae, we are towing nets behind a small boat and the net has a mesh of 150 microns, which is incredibly fine.

Almost like a tshirt.

You're letting water through, but most animals will be caught in it.

And with that, we can find really small larvae.

So, we take those up from the net, and in the lab we sort through them all.

[Kirstin] Plankton are things that drift around in the water column and have no power to swim against the current.

So, these basically come in a couple of types.

You think of phytoplankton, which are algae, they use sunlight to make food.

Zooplankton are animallike plankton.

And these are animals that I'm looking at.

So, I'm interested in things that only live in the water for part of their life cycle.

These are called meroplankton in contrast to holoplankton, which spend their whole life in the water column.

I am sorting out all of the things that are the meroplankton, the larvae that I'm interested in.

Larvae are small enough that most of them you can't see with the naked eye, so you have to have the microscope.

[Narrator] Prior to preserving specimens in ethanol, Kharis films and photographs the larvae.

[Kirstin] Because as soon as you preserve them in ethanol, they're gonna get contorted, they're gonna shrink.

So having that live photo before you preserve them or do anything else with them is really, really helpful to identify them later.

[Narrator] Larvae look very different from their adult counterparts, and many larval forms have yet to be identified.

DNA analysis of the preserved specimens helps to determine the species, which can then be matched to the known adults.

[Kharis] Most of the organisms in Kongsfjorden are on genetics databases online.

There's been extensive studies in Kongsfjorden.

[Narrator] The scientists are also trying to find out if the larvae are capable of eating this time of year.

[Kirstin] Larvae can rely on yolk from their mothers for food.

You know, like Mom's packed you a lunch and you're good to go, or you can get kicked out the front door with no packed lunch and have to find food on your own.

And I was finding those types of larvae in the middle of the polar night in 2020, and I was really confused because there's no sunlight, so there's no algae for them to be eating.

So how in the world do they survive?

Maybe they're not feeding at all.

Maybe they're just kind of like holding on, white knuckling it, you know, until lunchtime when the spring bloom arrives.

[Narrator] The spring bloom occurs when the light returns and phytoplankton can grow again.

This fuels an explosion of activity from the bottom of the food chain up.

[Kharis] Many organisms time their reproduction to this burst of food.

That way their larvae get the best chance of having enough food to grow up enough and settle to the sea floor.

[Narrator] To test if the different types of larvae can eat, Kirstin provided them with phytoplankton.

[Kirstin] I actually bought feed from an aquaculture company.

This is what you can like give oysters if you're culturing them.

[Narrator] The bodies of the larvae are clear, making it easy to tell if they have eaten.

[Kharis] If the gut was clear before we put them in with phytoplankton, and it was green after the phytoplankton, that means they can eat.

[Narrator] The scientists discovered that one of their two test subjects was able to eat.

But what might these larvae be eating in the wild in the absence of phytoplankton this time of year?

[Kirstin] And so for this, I've planned an isotope experiment.

They might be eating bacteria.

Bacteria can continue to exist in the water column.

There'’’s also dissolved organic matter in the water column.

This is just like organic molecules.

Amino acids are one example.

[Narrator] To test this theory the team provided different sets of larvae with isotopically labeled amino acids and bacteria.

If the larvae ate either, follow up lab tests will be able to pick up on those traceable isotopes.

[Kirstin] So doing those lab experiments, it's not a perfect indicator of what's happening in the wild, but it can give us the first step in trying to figure this out.

[Narrator] The researchers also want to find out if larvae are able to settle on the seafloor this time of year to begin their adult life.

To do so, they need to undergo an energetically costly metamorphosis, which is similar to how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly.

[Kirstin] They completely change their body plan.

They look like a pile of goo for a second and then they look like the adult.

[Narrator] Some larvae use chemical cues to find a good place to settle, often near adults of the same species.

[Kharis] So for the settlement experiment, we're offering them kelp as a cue that we have pulled from the dock.

The organisms that we're working with, we found them either attached to kelp or crawling on kelp as adults.

And so, we know that that would be a reasonable settlement location for them.

We see a lot of competition as one of the main factors influencing mortality, especially during the early settlement period.

And so, by having your larvae survive through this harsh period of the polar night and settle before everybody else comes and spawns in the spring, maybe lets them grow big enough to give them a chance at outcompeting their neighbors when they get to the sea floor.

[Narrator] Several of the organisms decided to settle as part of the experiment.

Studying settlement in the wild is much more challenging.

[Kirstin] Because we don't know what's happening when we're not there.

[Narrator] To monitor a settlement surface in the fjord, Kirstin worked closely with the engineers at WHOI to invent a camera system that can record settlement in real time.

[Kirstin] I call it CATAIN, which is an acronym.

It stands for camera to analyze invertebrates, but what it really photographs is settlers, and that's actually why it's called CATAIN.

Because when I asked my husband what should I name a camera system that photographs settlers, his answer was Catan.

So, we wanted to come up with something that was similar to the name of that board game.

It's a camera system that photographs its own end cap.

And you can see there's a macro lens and this little machine vision camera focused on the endcap and then, you know, all of the hardware and the batteries and everything.

This is the brains of the camera.

We've got a raspberry pie computer and we have a sleepy pie, which allows you to put the computer to sleep.

[Narrator] This will save battery power during months of deployment in near freezing waters.

[Kirstin] So the only thing pulling power constantly is the clock.

And when it reaches the time that it knows it's supposed to have a photo again, then it wakes itself up.

Under this electrical tape here, there's actually a string of LED lights.

The lights had to be on the outside so that it could flash through the end cap.

It kind of functions like a ring light.

Our settlement surface is vertical.

So, organisms are gonna settle on there and then the camera is facing out, and it's gonna photograph the organisms from underneath.

Using this, we are able to deploy the camera for long periods.

I have it programmed to record an image every 24 hours.

The reason that we wanna do every 24 hours is because there's a lot of things that settle down to the sea floor but then end up dying within that first really short period.

So, most researchers actually study recruitment, which is so poorly defined.

It's basically an operational definition.

Recruitment is surviving until the researcher comes back to count you.

Prior to us coming up with this camera system, it was really only possible to study settlement in environments where a researcher could be present every day because you would put out panels and pull them back up 24 hours later, you know, to see those first arrivals.

Whereas with this, we can actually get a photographic record of everybody who was there without having to stay up here, you know, all year.

So, I'm actually really excited about deploying this.

[Narrator] After years of planning and field trials back at home, the time has come to deploy CATAIN in Kongsfjorden.

[Kharis] To get it all set up, we had to create a heavy box for it to actually sit on the sea floor and not be jostled around by waves or whisked away.

[Kirstin] We deployed this camera system at 15 meters deep, close to the old pier.

[Kharis] For hard bottom organisms, the highest abundance and the highest diversity is generally around 15 meters in Kongsfjorden.

We marked a lot of GPS locations to make sure we know exactly where it is.

We're gonna have to send divers down to attach a rope to it to bring it back up.

When we finally got it to the sea floor, we were really excited because it's been a really long time coming.

[Kirstin] We're gonna get so much data that was never before possible to obtain.

I am so excited about this camera system.

[Narrator] While CATAIN will gather information about organisms that settle and live on hard bottom surfaces, the researchers also wanted to learn about species living in mud.

To do so, they collected samples at five stations ranging between 5 to 30 meters in depth.

[Kharis] So we've been sending a sediment grab to the sea floor off the back of the boat.

It scoops up the first couple centimeters of sediment, brings it back up to the boat and then back in the lab we sieve through it at two different levels.

One is 500 microns and one is 150 microns.

And then we're left with a sample that is some sediment, but mostly organisms.

And we'll take that back to the lab at Woods Hole and sort through them under the microscope and identify the species.

We're mostly looking for things like clams and snails.

Essentially we're trying to understand if the distribution of juveniles matches the distribution of adults.

[Narrator] In Arctic fjords, ice scour from sea ice or icebergs calving off the glaciers can scrape up the sea floor.

[Kirstin] It's like a meteor landing on earth.

If you're a worm in your happy little tube in the mud and an iceberg comes by, you're not surviving that.

[Narrator] Past research has shown that the diversity of adult invertebrates that live on the seafloor increases as it gets deeper and ice scour occurs less frequently.

[Kirstin] Kharis' question is at what point in the life history does that gradient get set up?

The hypothesis is that the larvae settle uniformly in any environment where they can survive.

The temperature is right, the salinity is right, there's food for them, et cetera.

And then the gradient in the adults happens because you have those shallow ones get scraped away.

And also the top layer, on top of all of that, is the climate change.

Going from a high sea ice cover in the fjord to now we've got open water pretty much allyearround, that's probably indicating less ice scour.

But the glacier is also melting.

So, then the icebergs calving off are more likely to impact the sea floor.

And so which one of those is more important?

Are we gonna see more ice effect, less ice effect?

[Narrator] Longterm data collected in NyAlesund is crucial to understanding our changing climate.

[Ingrid] For example, on glaciers there has been a study on the ice thickness.

Between 1936 and 2010, the scientists saw that the thickness was reduced by 25 meters within that time span.

So that is a very drastic reduction in the coverage of the glaciers.

[Jorgen] The last winter that really had sea ice here on the west coast of Svalbard, I think it was the winter, 2004, 2005.

[Narrator] These increased water temperatures are caused by a rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Norwegian Institute for Air Research, in partnership with NPI and others, has been continuously taking measurements at the Zeppelin Air Observatory on the mountain above NyAlesund.

[Ove] We started the greenhouse gas measurements here in the eighties.

First it was like CO2 and methane together with hydrocarbons.

And then later we got the CFCs and CFC replacement compounds.

If you measure greenhouse gases down on the continent, you will see a lot of fluctuations because you have a lot of emissions very close by.

Up here, you don't have these big emissions so what you measure is the, what you call the atmospheric background.

It's a good place to see how the atmosphere changes over time and how the greenhouse gas is built up in the atmosphere.

[Narrator] The Zeppelin Air Observatory is part of a global network of stations that all take longterm measurements.

[Ove] You need this big network of stations to get a really good global average to say when you look at the trends on how much it increases.

The trends tell us that greenhouse gases like methane, CO2 it's not slowing down and it's increasing every year.

[Narrator] Knowing these changes are occurring adds a level of urgency to the research conducted during the polar night.

[Kharis] It's really important that we kind of play catch up and try to really get an understanding of the overall ecosystem, the simple basic biology of what's going on here so that we can better understand how it's changing.

[Kirstin] If you understand the fundamental process and the mechanisms by which things happen, then you can make better predictions of how is this going to look in the future.

[Jorgen] It's one of the few sort of wildernesses remaining on the planet.

It's like a natural wonder to be able to see this region.

And I, I can only hope that my children and grandchildren will be able to experience some of what I have experienced, and in order for them to do that, we have to make sure that we take care of our planet.