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Newscasters: minute by minute drama playing out on the frozen high seas

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A rescue mission to free a ship trapped by thick ice in Antartica is running into major trouble this morning

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conditions just too rough to reach the stranded ship

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It's been nearly 100 hours since the Russian vessel first ran into trouble

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and now they're trapped. Caught in a deep freeze, a helicopter will fly most of the passengers

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to the Australian ice-breaker at the edge of the sea ice

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This was the helicopter that began the rescue of 52 people

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trapped in the Antarctic.

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The power of the thing was enormous. It's like the whole air was vibrating

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It literally came over the top of our heads and suddenly the down draft was awe inspiring

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We were bundled into the helicopter

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As we flew I was able to see the ice and to me it was an amazing thing

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to actually see the ice stretching into the distance

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I was amazed just to see how vast this field of ice was that we were all embedded in

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It was phenomenal, the ice that had come around us

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That flight left me thinking, I don't know how Shokalskiy's gonna get out of this

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Shokalskiy could become a permanent feature of Antarctica

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As a scientist Antarctica is just one of the most exciting regions of the world to work

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There's so much we still need to understand and how it fits into the global system

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It's an extreme environment and the key thing is you just have to try and anticipate what might change

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so we left Bluff in southern New Zealand on 8th December

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And there was a real buzz and excitement cos' this was the big one

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this was 4 weeks heading south

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The process of getting to Antarctica

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by ship is a really exciting one

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because you see the land drop behind you and then you're all alone on the sea

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and it's an alien environment for many people

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but also you're getting used to your fellow passengers

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so you're starting to form not only a relationship with the ocean

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but you're starting to forms relationships with people who you're going to be travelling with

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very often for several weeks.

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Half the team were full-time scientists looking at the full range

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of the natural and physical sciences

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from bird observations all the way through to the inner workings of the southern ocean

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Each day it gets a little colder and then half way across you come to this extraordinary

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biological boundary which is the edge of the cold water

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of Antarctica, the polar front.

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Beyond which the water is suddenly cold, Antarctic cold

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and it was cold enough to support icebergs, so there is somewhere you start to see these

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behemoths of ice, floating around like small countries.

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Chunks of Antarctica which have snapped off and floated away

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There was such excitement across all of the passengers once we started to see the first

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penguins on ice flows as we went past.

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I've spent a lot of my life watching Penguins

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and they're constantly fascinating

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there are a sentient being which we can have some connection with

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because they're charming and upright and walking around seemingly

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at ease and busily going about their business

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This is a Weddell Seal

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they don't have any land predators so they're very relaxed

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they're very chilled seals and you can see this guy's not bothered

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by us at all.

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So when the biopsy hits a Seal it can only go so far and then

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pops back out again and you can see here at the edge

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the little bit of blubber there. I use the fur to look at

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stable isotopes, to look at diet and to look at how far the animals have ranged

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and with the skin we do genetics.

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So although we've just biopsied him he's now rolling over and about to go to sleep

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so it mustn't be too traumatic

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Shokalskiy started getting into trouble when we left the edge of the fast ice

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in the polinear near the Hodgeman Islands

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and the ice was closing quickly around us

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and throughout that night the captain and the officers fought very hard to get the vessel

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out into open water and they couldn't.

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There was too much ice closing in on the ship like a big vice

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you could feel the ship banging into huge towers and bashing and lurching

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and it was quite dramatic

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and so we woke up the following morning to find the ship completely surrounded by ice

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and not able to move.

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It was this chaotic scene of jumbled block of ice almost like a derelict city

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As the ship started to be pushed over by the pressure of the ice

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it started to heel a little bit

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I realised that we were fully embedded in that ice

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and something significant was going to have to happen for us to get out of there

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I was a little nervous about the psychological cocktail that we'd been thrown into

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There were some people who were very concerned

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people were encouraged to ask questions of the expedition leaders

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Yesterday we were on the edge of the fast ice near the Hodgeman Islands

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and we've moved about a mile and a half over night

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trying to fight our way out of the pack ice which came round the ship yesterday afternoon

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and this morning at about 8 o'clock the captain decided just to sit and wait for a while

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Our circumstances got each day, hour by hour more and more difficult

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at first it was OK 'we're stuck for a while and we'll just wait and we'll get out'

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but then it changed.

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24 hours later icebergs had come into our world.

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The chill went through me to be honest

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particularly when they started to talk about the possibility of icebergs moving within

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600 meters of the bow.

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There was the potential for those icebergs to run into the ship

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and at that point the captain pushed the distress button

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after our distress button was pushed the rescue co-ordination centre called on every resource

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that they could to come to our assistance

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So the closest help that we knew was coming our was was the Chinese ice-breaker called

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Xue Long or the Snow Dragon and that was travelling from Perth to the Ross Sea

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and that agreed to divert to help break us out.

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We heard her on the VHF radio

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"OK thank you"

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We just got our first sight of the ship, it's about 9.5 miles away from us

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that's a big moment because it means that

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there's more of a psychological desire of the captain of the ship to get to us

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once he can see us, we're not just a dot on a radar.

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It was pushing through, coming towards and just thinking

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oh my gosh, with any luck it could be here by the morning

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which would be extraordinary, so people were very buoyant and very excited

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(laughter)

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I had a few hours sleep and woke about

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6 and basically it was clear that the Xue Long hadn't really moved at all

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Xue Long reached to within about six miles of us

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and found the going very difficult and the captain has decided to turn around

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that set the tone for the coming 5 days or so

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every step of the way as that week unfolded

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was in a sense a series of dissapointments

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"The art class that we have scheduled is going on for 11 o'clock

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in the dining room"

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The mood became almost jovial

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as we started to start things to find things to do and we set about to get a calendar

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of events going which we all attended with enthusiasm

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and if anything it became quite sort of surreal, it was quite boisterous considering

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the situation we were in.

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"The whole world is making a fuss, Big Brother House has nothing on us"

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"the Guardian and the BBC are putting out news on you and me"

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"It's a bloody great shame we're still stuck here"

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Researchers and tourists rang in the New Year on frozen Antarctic Tundra

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still stuck on a ship, locked in by thick ice.

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To another rescue underway this evening, this one moving a bit more slowly.

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When the ice first formed around the ship open water was just 2 miles away

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We take this technology for granted ago but a couple of generations ago you would be deciding

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which one to eat first!

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In those days, our situation had deteriorated quite significantly

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the Xue Long couldn't get to us and the captain of Xue Long decided that he would stay there

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waiting within view of us until the Aurora Australis came into the picture

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with the hope that the extra power of Aurora Australis would be able to cut us out

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The Aurora Australis, which is the Australian Government ice-breaker came into the picture

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from the very word go because they were tasked to come to our assistance

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straight away but they were much further afield

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Aurora Australis, Shokalskiy

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"Shokalskiy, Aurora Australis go ahead"

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after very hard effort from Aurora Australis the captain told us

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that he wasn't able to get to our position. Once again

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our world was flipped on its head because it meant

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that decisions had to be made, whether to evacuate the ship or not

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"we're readying people with the possibility of a quick exit but we'll stand by waiting

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for results of this ice reconnaissance"

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"OK, copy that, thank you"

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This is the Milo powder that we are using to mark the helipad

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so where the helicopter is supposed to land

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we're just marking it basically a straight line around the perimeter

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right there in the middle we also mark the 'H'

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that's what they're aiming for, so we'll try to land as close to it as possible

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right in the centre of that

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There's a level of tension, some people are a bit concerned

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I think one of the things is that you're going from the known to the unknown

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There's a step which is a box up to a two step ladder

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It was exciting, I found it personally exciting because I had to be on the ball

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all the time

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the pilot looked at me an gave me the thumbs up, you know

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and then I went towards the helicopter and they started jumping out

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and they threw out an incredible number of planks

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wooden planks on to the snow and I thought, what the hell's going on here?

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then I realised what they were going to do was to use those planks as the basis

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for the proper helipad because when the helicopter landed

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it actually sunk into the snow

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"cozy, it's very cozy"

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"this is fantastic!"

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Going past the Xue Long and seeing her beset

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as well made me feel sick

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There's a mixture of feelings and emotions because

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I was relieved that the operation had gone well

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I wasn't relieved to be out of there because I loved being there

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I'd be happy to still be there now, in a tent!

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When we booked on this ship that I hadn't seen in 10 years, hadn't been on here for a long time

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and the voyage leader Leanne grabbed me and held me and said 'welcome home

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you're back' and she didn't even know me!

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I just thought fuck how did you know me and she said

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I remember your name I've seen your name on the lists and it's this sense of community

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in place it's really special

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Newscasters: Dozens of people trapped by ice at the bottom of the world are finally on their way home

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...until about mid-January to get to the island of Tasmania from which they will finally fly home

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...in the Australian port of Hobart they faced the cameras

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and a barrage of questions on how their voyage went so terribly wrong

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We certainly didn't go into that environment thinking there was a chance we might get caught

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we don't look for those events, far from it we try to avoid those events

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and it's just really unfortunate that we got caught by this extreme event

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that basically trapped us.

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I can rarely think of a summer season in Antarctica where everything has gone exactly as planned

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there are always things that come up that are impossible to predict.

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The Aurora Australis was delayed by 2 weeks in getting back to Hobart

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and that will have consequences for the next voyages

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It's very intimately linked; operations, logistics and science programmes

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the ripple effect of any delay will magnify throughout the season

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We were not in that situation irresponsibly, we were in that situation

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wittingly, we have dealt with

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that situation, extraordinarily well, with ship, crew, passengers sane and healthy

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and on their way home

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and with a group of people who have

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had a life changing experience

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and that's amazing