Arctic ocean 2025

We need to predict and define this changeover as best as we can to anticipate the inevitable consequences of the ocean disruptions. Arctic exploration is critical to understand the consequences of the climate crisis. We plan to launch a mission to observe how the rapidly warming Arctic and its fast diminishing sea ice are affecting the atmosphere high above the expedition, the water below it and the weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The warming of the Arctic was driving some of the most profound changes to the world’s climate. But the region’s inaccessibility made it less understood by science than just about anywhere else on the planet. There is so much information we don’t have yet. We need expeditions to fill that gap with the most detailed study ever of the polar sea, its atmosphere and the pack ice that functions. Arctic Ocean Exploration can help to search for unknown forms of life, sample the water column to help determine the great transport pathways of this unexplored sea, and bring back samples of the lifeforms, water and sediments. The science team can also contribute to the search for new products from the sea. Scientists can collect smaller biota and microbial organisms for chemical, biological and genetic analysis; investigate the growth and culture requirements of recovered bacterial species; and screen recovered bacterial species for chemical, biological and enzymatic activity. Our vessel EXPLORE will sail to the arctic ocean in 2025 with the explorer Alban Michon.

Alban Michon is a specialist in the extreme. In 2010, he embarked on a 45-day adventure to the geographical North Pole, then in 2012, he headed to Greenland for ‘Le Piège Blanc’ (The White Trap) expedition. He runs the ice diving school in Tignes (Savoie, France) and has transformed it into a real training centre for divers for polar expedition diving teams.

A real fan of the polar regions and deep-sea diving, Alban Michon is a French adventurer and explorer who has gone on some exceptional expeditions. In 2010, he went diving at the geographical North Pole. In 2012, he travelled 1,000km in a sea kayak along the Greenland coast, and went diving under the icebergs there.
Alban Michon has always had a marked taste for adventure. He discovered deep-sea diving at age eleven and he had only just turned eighteen when he began working as an instructor at the beginning of the season in Corsica and Porquerolles. At age 22, he bought the Tignes ice diving school (Savoie, France), then the Vasques du Quercy deep-sea diving school centre (Lot, France).

Eight adventurers, one husky and one dream: to dive beneath the geographic North Pole. With such an audacious expedition in mind, what could be more natural than to call on the skills of Alban Michon, the undisputed specialist in ice diving and director of the Tignes school of diving? Three years’ preparation and many training sessions in Finland and the Alps are needed to turn this scientific exploit in the interests of humanity into reality. At long last, the team sets out in the spring of 2010.

From their 45-day journey, the polar explorers bring back precious data. The thickness of the snow on the ice crust, physiological reactions to challenging Arctic conditions and a photographic record of a fragile environment and wildlife that are both endangered by global warming… From the North Pole to Canada, the team covers one precious kilometer after another by ski. They perform 51 dives along the way. As the ultimate proof of the tragic influence of global warming on the Arctic, the expedition is finally forced to halt, due to a premature break-up of the ice that puts the nine lives of those who embarked on this adventure at risk…